Maria Coduri
A Travelling Tale:
Shakespeare on the Italian Stage
Thesis submitted for the Degree of MPhil
January 2013
Departments of Italian and English
School of European Languages, Culture and Society
University College London
University of London
1
DECLARATION
I, Maria Coduri, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own.
Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this
has been indicated in the thesis.
2
ABSTRACT
This thesis considers the transposition from page to stage of some of
Shakespeare’s plays in Italy. In particular it concentrates on different
approaches to Shakespeare’s texts and different ways to transform them into
theatrical action.
The first chapter has an introductory function, and lays the
groundwork for subsequent discussion. It illustrates the encounter between
the work of the English playwright and the Italian people through an overall
view of the reception of Shakespeare in Italy from the first mention of his
name in 1667 to Francesco De Sanctis’s critical writings in the midnineteenth century.
The following chapters discuss how Shakespeare’s plays have been
adapted for the stage by some prominent Italian actors and directors. The
focus is on three periods of the history of Italian theatre. The Great Actors
of the mid-nineteenth century offered stagings of Shakespeare’s plays that
focused on the main character, thus depriving them of anything that did not
enhance the role of the lead actor. The generation of the directors, that
flourished in Italy in the mid-twentieth century, advocated a philological
reading of the playtexts, after they had been so severely altered by the
generation of the actors. Finally, all through the 1960s and 1970s, the
experimentalists of the ‘Nuovo Teatro’ (‘New Theatre’) returned to what
can be defined ‘the actor’s theatre’, and their approach veered towards very
personal productions considered by many irreverent to and irrespectful of
the playtexts.
Combining general theoretical discussion with the close reading of
some adaptations, the thesis offers an analysis of different movements in
Italian productions of Shakespeare, and an argument about different
versions of Shakespearian ‘authenticity’ in Italy.
3
Table of Contents
Table of Figures ............................................................................................. 6
Table of Italian Titles and English Translations ............................................ 8
Table of English Titles and Italian Translations ............................................ 9
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 10
Introduction .................................................................................................. 10
Literature Review ......................................................................................... 17
1. The Reception of Shakespeare in Italy (1667-mid-19th century) ............ 35
1.1 From the First Mention of Shakespeare to Francesco De Sanctis ...... 35
1.2 Verdi’s Macbeth: a Milestone in the Diffusion and Appreciation of
Shakespeare’s Plays in Italy ..................................................................... 64
2. Shakespeare in the Actor’s Theatre (mid-19th century-1925) ................. 73
2.1 A Forerunner and the Great Actors .................................................... 74
2.2 The Generation of the Mattatori ......................................................... 97
3. Shakespeare in the Director’s Theatre (1947-1978) .............................. 111
3.1 From the Actor’s Theatre to the Director’s Theatre ......................... 111
3.2 The Foundation of the Piccolo Teatro della Citta’ di Milano .......... 117
3.3 Strehler, the Director ........................................................................ 129
3.4 Strehler’s First Productions of Shakespeare’s Plays ........................ 135
3.5 Re Lear ............................................................................................. 141
4
3.6 La Tempesta...................................................................................... 160
3.7 The Translation of The Tempest by Agostino Lombardo and Giorgio
Strehler ................................................................................................... 173
4. Shakespeare in the New Theatre (1959-1998) ....................................... 190
4.1 The New Theatre .............................................................................. 191
4.1.1 A Manifesto for the New Theatre .............................................. 212
4.1.2 The ‘Elementi di discussione del convegno per un nuovo teatro’
(‘Elements of Discussion of the Conference for a New Theatre’)...... 218
4.1.3 The Convegno di Ivrea............................................................... 221
4.1.4 The New Theatre and the Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde
Movements.......................................................................................... 225
4.2. Leo de Berardinis ............................................................................ 227
4.2.1 Working with Shakespeare in the 1960s: La Faticosa Messinscena
dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare; Sir And Lady Macbeth ........... 228
4.2.2 New Approaches to the Theatre of Shakespeare: the Productions
of the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s ................................................ 238
4. 3. Carmelo Bene ................................................................................. 254
4.3.1 A General Overview of Bene’s Theatre .................................... 256
4.3.2 Variations on Hamlet ................................................................. 263
Conclusion ................................................................................................. 286
Bibliography............................................................................................... 297
5
Table of Figures
Figure 1: Adelaide Ristori as Lady Macbeth ............................................... 87
Figure 2: Ernesto Rossi as Hamlet ............................................................... 88
Figure 3: Tommaso Salvini as Hamlet ......................................................... 88
Figure 4: Ernesto Rossi as Macbeth ............................................................. 88
Figure 5: Tommaso Salvini as Macbeth ....................................................... 88
Figure 6: Ermete Novelli as Shylock ......................................................... 101
Figure 7: Eleonora Duse as Cleopatra ........................................................ 107
Figure 8: Gordon Craig's screens for Hamlet ............................................. 115
Figure 9: Ottavia Piccolo as Cordelia and Tino Carraro as Lear ............... 154
Figure 10: Ottavia Piccolo as Cordelia and Tino Carraro as Lear ............. 155
Figure 11: Renato De Carmine as Gloucester and Tino Carraro as Lear in
Strehler's Re Lear ....................................................................................... 159
Figure 12: Paul Scofield as Lear, Alan Webb as Gloucester and Brian
Murray as Edgar in Brook's King Lear ...................................................... 159
Figure 13: Giulia Lazzarini as Ariel and Tino Carraro as Prospero .......... 165
Figure 14: Michele Placido as Caliban and Tino Carraro as Prospero ...... 171
Figure 15: Perla Peragallo .......................................................................... 236
Figure 16: Leo de Berardinis and Perla Peragallo in Sir and Lady Macbeth
.................................................................................................................... 237
Figure 17: Leo de Berardinis as Lear ......................................................... 243
6
Figure 18: Leo de Berardinis as Lear in Lear Opera ................................. 250
Figure 19: Carmelo Bene as Hamlet .......................................................... 269
Figure 20: Carmelo Bene as Hamlet in Hommelette for Hamlet ............... 278
Figure 21: Stefania De Santis as Ludovica Albertoni in Hommelette for
Hamlet ........................................................................................................ 279
7
Table of Italian Titles and English Translations
Amleto
Amleto
Hamlet
di
Carmelo
Bene
(da Hamlet by Carmelo Bene (from
Shakespeare a Laforgue)
Shakespeare to Laforgue)
Il gioco dei potenti
1, 2, 3 Henry VI
Il racconto d’inverno
The Winter’s Tale
King lacreme Lear napulitane
King tears Lear Neapolitan
King Lear: studi e variazioni
King Lear: Studies and Variations
La
faticosa
messinscena
dell’ The Challenging Staging of William
Amleto di William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
La Tempesta
The Tempest
Mercante di Venezia
The Merchant of Venice
Otello
Othello
Re Lear
King Lear
Re Lear da un’idea di gran teatro di King Lear from an Idea of Great
William Shakespeare
Theatre by William Shakespeare
Riccardo III
Richard III
Romeo e Giulietta
Romeo and Juliet
Sogno di una notte di mezza estate
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Totò principe di Danimarca
Totò Prince of Denmark
8
Table of English Titles and Italian Translations
The Challenging Staging of William La
faticosa
messinscena
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Amleto di William Shakespeare
Hamlet
Amleto
Hamlet by Carmelo Bene (from Amleto
di
Carmelo
Shakespeare to Laforgue)
Shakespeare a Laforgue)
King Lear
Re Lear
Bene
dell’
(da
King Lear from an Idea of Great Re Lear da un’idea di gran teatro di
Theatre by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
King Lear: Studies and Variations
King Lear: studi e variazioni
King tears Lear Neapolitan
King lacreme Lear napulitane
The Merchant of Venice
Mercante di Venezia
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sogno di una notte di mezza estate
1, 2, 3 Henry VI
Il gioco dei potenti
Othello
Otello
Richard III
Riccardo III
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo e Giulietta
The Tempest
La Tempesta
Totò Prince of Denmark
Totò principe di Danimarca
The Winter’s Tale
Il racconto d’inverno
9
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Dr
Florian Mussgnug and Professor Helen Hackett. From the very beginning
they have encouraged me to follow this project and shown great enthusiasm,
and their expert guidance and support have made this all happen.
I am indebted to Giulia Lazzarini, Elena Bucci and Ferdinando
Bruni, who accepted to be interviewed and gave me precious insight into
their work on Shakespeare as actors and directors. Many thanks to Professor
Margaret Rose of the Università Statale di Milano and to Mario Allemandi,
Chairman of the Associazione Amici del Piccolo Teatro di Milano, who
provided me with these useful contacts.
I wish to express my gratitude to the UCL and BL library staff for
their kindness and willingness to help.
Finally, I would like to thank Jonathan for the precious moral and
practical support he has shown during the past three years it has taken me to
finalize this thesis.
10
Introduction
My travelling tale began studying and subsequently teaching English
to secondary school students in my native country Italy. A developing
passion for theatre transformed an immersion in the English language
dramatists into a deeper curiosity for another culture, another country, and
another way of being. Travelling to England and researching Shakespeare
and the links between his body of work and subsequent stagings in Italy
began to elicit and pose questions in me about the ‘trade’ in ideas between
different cultures, and about what bridges and what separates the culture and
history of my native homeland and the world beyond.
This is a travelling tale for many different reasons. On a personal
level, it is my journey from Italy to Britain, from being a teacher to being a
student, from using Italian as my everyday language to relating to other
people mostly in English, from my native well known culture to a different
one. On the level of my research into the work of Shakespeare, it is the
journey of his plays from Britain to Italy, from page to stage, from English
to Italian, from the culture in which they were conceived to the Italian
culture. There is a kind of symmetry in all this and, in both cases, there is a
process of adaptation that has taken place, but also an opportunity to open
up to something new, and to gain something from the dynamic, reciprocal
encounter between two cultures and two languages.
In the programme of the Globe to Globe festival that ran in London
from 21st April to 9th June 2012, Dennis Kennedy mentions Salman
Rushdie’s words, ‘It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in
translation. I cling obstinately to the notion that something can be gained’.1
How can we object to this idea when we think of what the festival was: 37
Shakespeare’s plays in 37 languages, including British Sign Language. Tom
Bird, the festival director, travelled to every corner of the world to choose
the companies that would perform in London, and he realized that the
British are not the most fervent worshippers of Shakespeare. In the
1
Globe to Globe Festival Programme (London: Shakespeare’s Globe, 2012), p. 2.
11
programme he reports that some Armenians, for example, give their
children the name of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Malikyan, Shakespeare
Kardashian.2 Companies from the most diverse cultures came to London to
perform in Shakespeare’s theatre. It is a kind of return journey, in which
British Shakespeare was first transformed into foreign Shakespeare and
then, in the new adapted form, was brought back to his homeland. We
usually assume that this transformation is possible because of Shakespeare’s
plays’ universality, but Kennedy prefers to talk about flexibility:
His plays are open documents that can be made to fit many styles
and many meanings, from the cinematic realism of Al Pacino to the
overtly stagey song and dance of Beijing Opera. This process has
been going on since Shakespeare death, and quite likely while he
was still alive. In fact from 1660 to about 1850 and beyond, hardly a
play of Shakespeare’s was seen on stage in London unless it had
been significantly altered in language, plot or character.3
This is exactly what my thesis is about. It is about flexibility and,
consequently, about transformation and adaptation. And certainly it is about
a gain and not about a loss.
A Travelling Tale: Shakespeare on the Italian Stage considers the
transposition from page to stage of some of Shakespeare’s plays in Italy. In
particular it concentrates on different approaches to Shakespeare’s texts and
different ways to transform them into physicality on the stage. The work
stretches over a very long period of time. It starts in 1667 when the name of
Shakespeare was mentioned in Italy for the first time, and ends in the 1990s,
with productions of Shakespeare’s plays by two Italian actor-directors, Leo
de Berardinis and Carmelo Bene. For obvious reasons I have chosen some
‘blocks’ within this very long period, on the basis of my focus of interest.
The discussion addresses many different topics, but there are two main
2
3
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 3.
12
strands, which I investigate. On the one hand I study some of Shakespeare’s
plays and their transformation into theatrical action through the
development of Italian theatre in terms of acting and of directing; on the
other I explore different kinds of staging playtexts in Italy through the work
of Shakespeare. Related to the first area there are issues concerning the shift
from Shakespeare’s texts, which only consist of words, into stage
productions which, besides words, involve other means of communication
like the gestures and movements of the actors, and the choice of the stage
set, of the props, of the lights, of the music. Working on foreign
Shakespeare, there is another shift to consider, that is the shift from the
language of the playtexts, English, into the language of the stage production,
Italian. Another issue worth exploring is what we can call the
‘appropriation’ process, that is, how the Italians have appropriated the
English playwright and adapted his plays to their culture. Related to the
second line of research are issues concerning theatre practices in Italy.
When talking about the staging of a play, three figures must be taken into
account: the author, the actor, and the director. In the course of time, the
strength of one of the three has meant the weakness of the others, in a game
of power, which, with varying levels of success, has seen one of the three
stand out to the detriment of the remaining two. I investigate this issue in
relation to the Italian stage and, through the close reading of some stagings
of Shakespeare’s plays, I study how the Italian theatre has developed, and
whether it has privileged what we can define as ‘the author’s theatre’, ‘the
actor’s theatre’, or ‘the director’s theatre’. They are three completely
different kinds of theatre, the first of which considers the author’s text as
‘sacred’ and, therefore, immutable. In theory, at least, one staging only is
possible, that is the staging that the author would have had in mind (if he
had one). The second sees the actor as the dominant figure on the stage, the
star that fills the space with his or her sole presence, and who adapts the text
to his or her own taste. The third replaces the supremacy of the actor with
that of the director, a supervisor, who substitutes the oneness of the actor
with the oneness of the staging, who is in charge of every single aspect of it,
and who blends all the elements that contribute to the transformation of a
13
text into theatricality in a harmonious way. The three kinds of theatre have
all intersected with Shakespeare’s tradition, and have given birth to very
different Shakespeares on the stage.
The thesis is composed of four chapters. The first chapter has an
introductory function, and lays the groundwork for subsequent discussion. It
illustrates the encounter between the work of the English playwright and the
Italian people through an overall view of the reception of Shakespeare in
Italy from 1667 to Francesco De Sanctis’s critical writings of his plays in
the mid-nineteenth century. Today Shakespeare in Italy is considered as
important as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, so much so, that in secondary
school, the great majority of students study his plays, and/or his sonnets
(probably more than British students do!). Universities and other academic
institutions host national and international Shakespeare conferences, and
Shakespeare events. Theatre productions of Shakespeare’s plays are staged
every year in every corner of Italy, Shakespeare’s festivals are organized in
the country, and British companies come with their English productions.
Italian theatres also host foreign productions such as those by the Lithuanian
Eimuntas Nekrosius and the German Thomas Ostermeier. Among the
various reproductions of the London Globe theatre, one is in Rome. All of
this is taken for granted today. But it has not always been so. The
acceptance of Shakespeare in Italy involved a long gestation period, and
strong resistance to the novelty that his plays represented within the context
of the Italian theatre of the end of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century
(before the name of Shakespeare was completely unknown in the
peninsula). Chapter 1 tells this story, and gives an account of the work done
by men of different skills and working in different fields to make
Shakespeare’s plays known, understood and loved in Italy.
The following chapters discuss how Shakespeare’s plays have been
adapted for the stage by some prominent Italian actors and directors. The
focus is on three periods of the history of Italian theatre. Chapter 2 looks at
the work done by the Great Actors of the mid-nineteenth century, who took
up Shakespeare and performed his plays not only in Italy but also in Britain
and in America. Their acting style differed significantly from the Anglo14
Saxon, so much so that Marvin Carlson speaks of an ‘Italian style’, which
juxtaposed a passionate kind of acting in comparison with the restraint of
British actors. The chapter also introduces the idea of the actor’s theatre, a
theatre in which the lead actor was in charge of all the aspects of the
production. The actors of the mid-nineteenth century and beginning of the
twentieth century appropriated Shakespeare’s plays, and offered stagings
that focused on the main character, thus depriving them of all the elements
that did not enhance their role. Besides being actors, therefore, they also
acquired dramaturgical functions. The chapter also considers the work done
with Shakespeare’s plays in Britain in the same period, and reveals how
even British actors appropriated the playwright’s texts and altered his plays
to suit their taste and the taste of the age.
The generation of the directors, that flourished in Italy in the midtwentieth century, is the subject of chapter 3. The director’s theatre is the
theatre in which the mise-en-scène is seen as a product that must be treated
in its entirety, as opposed to the actor’s theatre in which only the figure of
the lead actor was exalted. The focus of the chapter is on the productions of
Shakepeare’s plays by Giorgio Strehler, probably the most influential Italian
director up to date. In 1947 in Milan, Strehler set up the first civic theatre
funded with public money. On the one hand he wanted to improve the
conditions of Italian theatre which, for the most part, still consisted of
touring companies that offered a predominantly commercial repertoire of
low-budget productions. On the other he wanted to restore the original texts
after they had been so severely altered by the generation of the actors. The
chapter discusses the shift from the actor’s theatre to the director’s theatre,
which, at least in its first expressions, advocated a philological reading of
the playtexts, and considered the director as the custodian of the text. The
chapter also considers the paradox implicit in the idea of authenticity if
compared with the hybridity, fluidity, and instability of Shakespeare’s texts.
My interview with Giulia Lazzarini, who played the part of Ariel in
Strehler’s 1978 production of La Tempesta certainly makes my discussion
more interesting.
15
Chapter 4 investigates the work of the experimentalists of the
‘Nuovo Teatro’ (‘New Theatre’) who, throughout the 1960s and 1970s,
advocated a return to the actor’s theatre, while their approach to
Shakespeare veered towards very personal productions considered by many
irreverent to and disrespectful of the playtexts. The first part of the chapter
concentrates on the birth and development of new self-financed theatre
groups who produced their stagings in spaces like cellars or basements,
where they could experiment with a different kind of theatre. The chapter
then compares these productions with those of the director’s theatre. The
director was no longer seen as the faithful interpreter of Shakespeare’s texts,
and men like de Berardinis and Bene claimed the autonomy of the staging
from the playwriting. The chapter also explores the almost counter-intuitive
idea that the representatives of the New Theatre, despite distancing
themselves from what may have been the original texts, shared more with
Shakespeare’s theatre than the protagonists of the director’s theatre. Even
this chapter is enriched by an interview. Elena Bucci, an actress who was
present in most of de Berardinis’s Shakespearian productions, gave me an
invaluable contribution
to understand the theatre of the
Italian
experimentalists.
My thesis aims at investigating three different kinds of theatre and
the ways in which each one of them intersected with Shakespeare’s
tradition. It takes into account three moments of breaking with the past, and
of evolution in the history of Italian theatre, but it also illustrates how
theatrical culture is cyclical, and how new theatre practices may recall older
ones, and transform them in personal ways. The thesis is also a story of love
for Shakespeare that different protagonists of the Italian stage have
expressed in different ways at different times.
16
Literature Review
Literature in English on the topic of Italian adaptations of
Shakespeare’s plays is not rich, and it is fragmentary. There are single
essays on a few Italian theatre directors, and one book that discusses
Shakespearian adaptations by the mid-nineteenth-century actors. Even as to
the reception of Shakespeare in Italy, contributions are scant and are not
recent. Literature on the topic in Italian is richer but, as the following
discussion of the critics’ approaches and conclusions will indicate, it leaves
areas unexplored that have created space for my project. Moreover there is
no scholarly study, either in English or in Italian, that provides a detailed
comparative analysis of stagings of Shakespeare’s plays in the three kinds of
theatre I have cited in the introduction
The present review of critical literature will survey two groups of
studies: those which consider the reception of Shakespeare in Italy and
Italian adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays; and those which offer an
overview of global Shakespeare. My analysis will be more detailed as to the
first group that is closely linked to my thesis, while I will only briefly
review, or just cite, work in the second adjoining field.
Lacy Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy has been a fundamental
instrument for me to acquire the background I needed to work more
consciously on the recent past and on the present.4 The book traces the
history of Shakespeare in Italy from the first mentions of his name to the
age of stage performances by the mid-nineteenth-century actors. It gives a
detailed account of criticism of Shakespeare before and after Voltaire; it
contextualizes the debate on Shakespeare within the wider debate on
Romanticism; it evaluates translations of Shakespeare’s plays up to those by
Carlo Rusconi and Giulio Carcano started in 1832, and it discusses the
influence of Shakespeare on Alessandro Manzoni. Shakespeare in the
4
Lacy Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy (Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head
Press, 1916).
17
nineteenth-century theatre is addressed in the last chapter and is not
examined in detail.
Agostino Lombardo’s essay ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’ has
proved a detailed guide to understand the contribution given by Italian
writers and critics to the knowledge and understanding of the poet’s texts as
to their content and, more recently, to the language and form. 5 Like
Collison-Morley, Lombardo starts his study from the first mentions of
Shakespeare in Italy. Then he contentrates on Manzoni’s, De Sanctis’s, and
Croce’s criticism of the English playwright, and concludes with more recent
criticism, although he does not provide a thorough insight into this.
Focusing on the reception of Shakespeare in Italy in the eighteenth
century, is Gaby Petrone Fresco’s Shakespeare’s Reception in 18th Century
Italy: The Case of Hamlet.6 The scholar emphasizes the role played by the
few Italians who had a first-hand knowledge of the work of Shakespeare.
She chooses Hamlet as an exemplary case to explore issues concerning the
introduction of Shakespeare in Italy, such as the debt that the country owes
to France as the first translations were made from French versions of the
plays, or the need to adapt the English playwright’s texts to the Italian
culture.
As for literature in Italian, in Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia
nel Settecento, Anna Maria Crinò examines the first translations of
Shakespeare’s plays in Italian, but also devotes her attention to the first
criticism of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century.7 As Petrone Fresco
would also do, she emphasizes the Italian indebtedness to France not only
5
Agostino Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, in The Disciplines of Criticism:
Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene,
and Lowry Nelson Jr (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), 531-580.
Lombardo (1927-2005) was a linguist, translator, critic, and professor of English literature.
He is considered as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of English and American studies in Italy
and one of the Italian most influential Shakespeare scholars. He translated many of
Shakespeare’s plays, among which The Tempest for Giorgio Strehler’s production of 1978.
I will write extensively about the collaboration between the two men in chapter 3.
6
Gaby Petrone Fresco, Shakespeare’s Reception in 18th Century Italy: The Case of Hamlet
(Berne: Peter Lang, 1993).
7
Anna Maria Crinò, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento (Roma: Edizioni
di storia e letteratura, 1950).
18
for translations, but also as Italian criticism of Shakespeare was deeply
influenced by Voltaire’s love-hate relationship for the playwright.
The books I have mentioned so far, have proved useful sources for
chapter 1 of my thesis, which, as I have already pointed out, introduces the
topic I discuss in the following chapters.
Chapter 2 continues the analysis of the reception of Shakespeare’s in
Italy concentrating on the contribution given by the mid-nineteenth-century
actors to spread knowledge of the English playwright among the people. In
this chapter I also begin my discussion of how Shakespeare’s plays have
been taken to the stage within the context of different kinds of theatre. There
is only one book in English that considers the Italian stage adaptations in the
nineteenth century: Marvin Carlson’s The Italian Shakespearians:
Performances by Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi in England and America.8 The
scholar focuses on Shakespearian interpretations of the three most famous
Italian actors of the century. He explores their acting style comparing it with
the British or American, and gives an account of their Shakespearian
performances in Italian in Britain and in America. While also referring to
the actors who preceded Ristori, Rossi, and Salvini, Carlson does not
consider the actors who followed them, and who embodied the shift from
the actor’s theatre to the director’s theatre in Italy.9
While I am not aware of any English books that investigate the
Shakespearian performances of the generation of the mattatori such as
Giovanni Emanuel, Ermete Novelli, and Ermete Zacconi, literature in
English on the life and art of Eleonora Duse is rich enough. 10 Among the
books I have used there are Giovanni Pontiero’s Eleonora Duse: In Life and
Art and Bernardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in her Time by John Stokes,
8
Marvin Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians: Performances by Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi
in England and America (Washington: Folger Books; 1985).
9
The book contains a portfolio of drawings and photographs of the actors in character.
10
There is no English equivalent for the Italian mattatore. In general mattatore is the term
used to identify the second genearation of nineteenth-century actors, those born in the
middle of the century. In chapter 2 I will explain what distinguished the theatre of the Great
Actors from the theatre of the mattatori.
19
Michael R. Booth, and Susan Bassnett.11 The first is a biography that covers
Duse’s entire life, from her upbringing to international success, emphasizing
her role as a pioneer in theatre. In the second Bassnett concentrates on Duse
the actress, discussing her collaborations with Arrigo Boito, with Gabriele
D’Annunzio, her passion for Henrik Ibsen, and her interest in the
development of theatre in Europe.
Among literature in Italian there are various books that consider the
transposition from text to stage by nineteenth-century actors. Among those I
have used there is Il teatro del personaggio: Shakespeare sulla scena
italiana dell’800 edited by Laura Caretti that, as the title suggests, hints at
the character as the focus of such adaptations.12 The book, which is a
collection of essays, also considers other aspects linked to the staging of the
playtexts, such as translations, and Verdi’s adaptation of Macbeth, just to
mention two.
Leonardo Bragaglia’s Shakespeare in Italia: personaggi ed
interpreti: vita scenica del teatro di Guglielmo Shakespeare in Italia (17921973) is a survey of stage adaptations.13 Being an actor and a director,
besides writing essays, Bragaglia devotes all his attention to the theatre
productions, and to the actors, while poetical or critical evalutations of the
playtexts are completely missing.
In Teatro e spettacolo nel Secondo Ottocento Roberto Alonge
provides a thorough insight into the actor’s theatre, examining the
performances of both the Great Actors and the mattatori, and compares the
Italian situation with what was happening in Europe in the nineteenth
century, when the figure of the director had already established itself.14 The
author also illustrates the development of a European dramaturgy, and gives
an overview of the Italian dramaturgy in the same period.
11
Giovanni Pontiero, Eleonora Duse: In Life and Art (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986). John
Stokes, Michael R. Booth, and Susan Bassnett, Bernardt, Terry, Duse: The Actress in her
Time by (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
12
Il teatro del personaggio: Shakespeare sulla scena italiana dell’800 ed. Laura Caretti
(Roma: Bulzoni, 1979).
13
Leonardo Bragaglia, Shakespeare in Italia: personaggi ed interpreti: vita scenica del
teatro di Guglielmo Shakespeare in Italia (1792-1973) (Roma: Trevi Editore, 1973).
14
Roberto Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel Secondo Ottocento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1988).
20
Differently from the sources I have mentioned, chapter 2 of my
thesis offers a complete overview of the performances of all the actors that
occupied the Italian theatrical scene between the mid-nineteenth century and
the beginning of the twentieth, before their supremacy was replaced by the
supremacy of the director. I consider the forerunnes of the Great Actors,
those who, for the first time and with very little success, tried to offer
Shakespeare’s plays on the Italian stage. Then I move on to the Great
Actors, with whom Shakespeare gained enormous popularity in Italy.
Finally I investigate the performances of the later generation, the mattatori,
and reflect upon the changes that this group of actor-interpreters brought
about both as to Shakespearian performances, and to theatre in general. I
also discuss the idea of the encounter between the actors and Shakespeare as
a meeting place, which allows the first to use the work of the second as a
source for the creation of new artworks. I finally refer to the appropriation
of the actor-directors of the 1960s, who adopted a similar approach to
Shakespeare’s plays and advocated a return to the theatre of the actor. In so
doing I introduce the idea of cyclicality within theatrical culture.
In chapter 3 I illustrate the shift form the actor’s theatre to the
director’s theatre. Firstly I discuss theoretical issues concerning the latter. I
offer general ideas about directing, and I bring to light the aspects that
characterized directing in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. As
to this topic, I have used secondary literature in Italian.
A book that provides a thorough insight into the issues mentioned
above is Silvio d’Amico’s Tramonto del grande attore, published in 1929.15
Here, at a time when theatre was still the theatre of the actor in Italy,
d’Amico examines this situation, focusing on the period between 1920 and
1929, when the debate over the necessity to introduce the figure of the
theatre director started in Italy. D’Amico clearly states that the staging
should be at the service of the text. Therefore he advocates the presence of a
supervisor who would replace the predominance of the actor on the Italian
stage. He analyses the theatre of the mattatori, and gives an account of the
15
Silvio d’Amico, Tramonto del grande attore (Firenze: La casa Usher, 1985).
21
activity of influential figures for the renewal of European theatre, like
Jacques Copeau and Erwin Piscator.
Various books illustrate the birth of directing in Europe and/or in
Italy. Among them we can cite: Mirella Schino’s La nascita della regia
teatrale; Umberto Artioli’s Il teatro di regia: genesi ed evoluzione (18701950); and Roberto Alonge’s Il teatro dei registi: scopritori di enigmi e
poeti della scena.16 The most important book on the birth of directing in
Italy is still Claudio Meldolesi’s Fondamenti del teatro italiano: la
generazione dei registi.
17
The book is divided in two: some of the chapters
are theoretical. In these Meldolesi examines issues related to directing, and
outlines three lines of directing in Italy focusing on what he calls ‘critical
directing’. In the other chapters he considers the work of those directors
who were born in the 1920s and started to experiment with directing in the
1940s and 1950s. The figures he concentrates on are Giorgio Strehler, Vito
Pandolfi, and Luigi Squarzina, whom he regards as a compact generation,
those who introduced directing in Italy. The other books were all published
in the span of three years. While Schino’s book starts its investigation from
the experiences of the last decades of the nineteenth century, both Artioli
and Alonge draw the attention to previous stagings in France, Germany and
England that anticipated the modes of the director’s theatre. All the books
investigate the work done by those who are considered as the founding
fathers of European directing, namely the Duke of Meininger,
André
Antoine, Constantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod E. Mejerchol’d, and Antonin
Artaud. Alonge also devotes the last chapters of his book to contemporary
directors like Giorgio Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy
Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. While all these books were fundamental for
me to extend my knowledge of theatre directing, none of them refers
specifically to Shakespeare, as my research does.
16
Mirella Schino, La nascita della regia teatrale (Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2003); Umberto
Artioli, Il teatro di regia: genesi ed evoluzione (1870-1950) (Roma: Carocci, 2004);
Roberto Alonge, Il teatro dei registi: scopritori di enigmi e poeti della scena (Roma-Bari,
Laterza, 2006).
17
Claudio Meldolesi, Fondamenti del teatro italiano: la generazione dei registi (Firenze:
Sansoni, 1984).
22
An interesting discussion on the role of the author, the actor, and the
director in theatre is offered by the essay ‘Actors, authors and directors’, by
Joseph Farrell.18 Within his discussion, Farrell also gives account of the
view of Luigi Pirandello who saw both the actors and the directors as
artisans at the service of the author. The final part of the essay focuses on
experimental theatre groups that towards the end of the 1960s opposed the
official theatre and the role of the director.
In order to shape my ideas as to which actors, directors, and
companies I wished to include in my research, an invaluable instrument was
Anna Anzi’s Shakespeare nei teatri milanesi del Novecento.19 The book is
composed of two volumes: the first published in 1980, covers the years
1904-1978, the second published in 2001, stretches between 1978 and 2000.
It offers a survey of Shakespearian productions in Milan. For each
production it gives all the information needed (theatre, date, name of the
company, of the director, and of the actors), followed by a description of the
production and a survey of critical reviews.
After the theoretical introduction illustrated above, chapter 3 of my
thesis moves on to analyse stagings of Shakespeare’s plays by Streher.
The only monography in English on Strehler’s work is David Hirst’s
Giorgio Strehler.20 After two introductory chapters in which Hirst tells the
story of the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro and of Strehler’s ideas about
theatre in general, the author dedicates the following three chapters to
examine Strehler’s theatre adaptations of the texts by his favourite
playwrights: Luca Goldoni, William Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht. The
analysis of Shakespeare’s Re Lear and of La Tempesta is quite thorough,
although the scholar makes no reference to the text and does not provide any
insights into the issue of translation.
Besides this book, there are only articles on Strehler’s adaptations of
Shakespeare’s plays (or on Strehler in general). Gian Giacomo Colli’s
18
Joseph Farrell ,‘Actors, authors and directors’, in A History of Italian Theatre, ed. Farrell
and Paolo Puppa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 269-277.
19
Anna Anzi, Shakespeare nei teatri milanesi del Novecento (Bari: Adriatica, 1980-2001).
20
David Hirst, Giorgio Strehler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
23
‘Shakespeare in a Fountain: The First Italian Production of The Tempest
directed by Giorgio Strehler’
21
gives a detailed description of Strehler’s
production of La Tempesta in 1948. The successive production of 1978 is
discussed by Pia Kleber in ‘Theatrical Continuities in Giorgio Strehler’s
The Tempest’.22 Very interesting to understand the different readings of the
play by Jan Kott and by Strehler is Kott’s article ‘Prospero or the Director:
Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’.23 Here Kott argues that the problem of that
production was the excessive identification of the Italian director with
Prospero. Instead, within the context of my discussion of stagings of
Shakespeare’s plays in the director’s theatre, I suggest that this
identification is the proof that any transposition from page to stage is
inevitably influenced by the director’s reading of the play. Consequently,
what the audience saw in 1978 was not Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but
Strehler’s interpretation of it.
A discussion of the visual aspect of Strehler’s productions, with an
emphasis on Re Lear and La Tempesta is provided by the section that
Kennedy dedicates to Strehler in his Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual
History of Twentieth-Century Performance.24 The scholar offers an
overview of some of the director’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, and
then concentrates on the productions of Re Lear of 1972 and of La Tempesta
of 1978. The second production, in particular, was highly visual, and
Kennedy describes in detail the unrealities created by Prospero, which were
nonetheless very clear stage effects. I found Kennedy’s analysis particularly
interesting as its focus is on the devices that can be used for stage
21
Gian Giacomo Colli, ‘Shakespeare in a Fountain: The First Italian Production of The
Tempest directed by Giorgio Strehler’, Theatre Research International, 29.2 (2004), 174185.
22
Pia Kleber, ‘Theatrical Continuities in Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’, in Foreign
Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance, ed. Dennis Kennedy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
23
Jan Kott, ‘Prospero or the Director: Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’, Theater, 10.2
(1979), 117-122.
24
Dennis Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century
Performance, 2nd edn (1993; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). The section
on Strehler’s Re Lear is at pp. 216-219; the section on La Tempesta is at pp. 304-310.
24
representation, and that can replace what cannot be rendered through
translation.
Literature in Italian on Strehler is quite rich, and includes many
writings of Strehler himself. In Inscenare Shakespeare Strehler offers
general thoughts about the staging of Shakespeare’s plays.25 The book also
includes the production notes for Coriolanus premièred on 9 November
1957; for Re Lear premièred on 6 November 1972, and for La Tempesta
premièred on 28 June 1978. It is a very useful instrument to follow
Strehler’s reading and interpretation of the texts, and his ideas as to the
transposition of the written words to the stage, including some thoughts on
the issue of translation.
In Strehler e Shakespeare the already-mentioned Lombardo offers a
survey of Strehler’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays.26 Lombardo worked
side by side with Strehler various times. The book (which was firstly
conceived as an essay) does not provide a thorough insight into the work of
Strehler, but is a useful instrument to introduce the reader to the director’s
stagings of Shakespeare’s plays. It touches on various elements of Strehler’s
theatre, like the metatheatrical quality of some of his stagings, the issue of
translation, and the serious study that Strehler did for each of his stagings.
The book quotes extensively from Strehler himself.
A very useful instrument for the analysis of Strehler’s Re Lear is
Giorgio Strehler’s Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, which provides the script of
the stage adaptation, a portfolio of photos, the diary of rehearsals of some of
the
actors
involved
in
the
production,
and
Lombardo’s
essay
‘Irrappresentabile o illegibile’ (‘Unperformable or unreadable’), which
addresses the issue of whether Shakespeare’s King Lear is a text to be read
or to be represented on the stage.27
25
Giorgio Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare (Roma: Bulzoni, 1992).
Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare (Roma: Bulzoni, 1992). For more about Lombardo
see footnote 5 at p. 19.
27
Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare (Verona: Bertani, 1973); Lombardo,
‘Irrappresentabile o illegibile’, in Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, 259-267.
25
26
La Tempesta tradotta e messa in scena, 1977-78: un carteggio
ritrovato fra Strehler e Lombardo e due traduzioni inedite realizzate da
Lombardo per il Piccolo Teatro di Milano edited by Rosy Colombo was
another invaluable instrument for me.28 The book contains the letters that
Strehler exchanged with Lombardo, the translator of the play. The
translation was a joint work between the scholar and the artist, and the
letters are real essays by Strehler on the issue of translation for the stage.
Following this part, the book provides the English text that was used by
Lombardo and the two translations that were made, one for the reading and
one for the staging.
What is missing in these books is a discussion of the characteristics
of the staging of a Shakespeare play in the director’s theatre. My
investigation of Strehler’s theatre goes hand in hand with a reflection upon
what distinguishes a production as the result of the work of a director, and
one as the result of the work of an actor. Another issue I investigate in this
chapter, which is not identified in any of the sources I have mentioned is the
meaning of ‘original text’ when we speak about Shakespeare’s plays. I
contrast the idea of the restoration of Shakespeare’s original texts that
characterized directing in Italy in the mid-twentieth century with the
instability and fluidity of Shakespeare’s texts.
My discussion continues in chapter 4 with Shakespearian adaptations
of Shakespeare’s plays by avant-garde groups that started their
experimentations at the end of the 1950s. In particular I concentrate on the
work of de Berardinis and Bene. Before looking into their work, I give an
overall view of what is now known as the Nuovo Teatro (New Theatre), one
of the definitions – along with experimental theatre, or avant-garde theatre –
that is used to define the theatrical experiences of groups of young theatre
practitioners who, from the 1960s experimented with new forms of theatre
28
William Shakespeare, Agostino Lombardo and Giorgio Strehler, La Tempesta tradotta e
messa in scena, 1977-78: un carteggio ritrovato fra Strehler e Lombardo e due traduzioni
inedite realizzate da Lombardo per il Piccolo Teatro di Milano ed. Rosy Colombo (Roma:
Donzelli, 2007). The book is accompanied by a DVD of the television broadcast of the
original mtheatre production, directed by Claudio Battistoni.
26
opposing mainstream theatre. Two books have been useful sources for my
discussion: Marco De Marinis’s Il Nuovo Teatro 1947-1970, and the more
recent La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia: 1959-1967 by Daniela
Visone.29 While the first offers an international perspective with an overall
view of experimental theatre in and outside Italy, Visone’s book thoroughly
illustrates the birth (which she traces in 1959) and development of the
Nuovo Teatro in Italy, and then it gives an account of the Convegno di Ivrea
(Ivrea Conference) of 1967. Visone makes extensive reference to De
Marinis’s Il Nuovo Teatro. While De Marinis’s book does not contain any
pictures, Visone’s contains a portfolio of photographs of some stagings by
various directors.
Fundamental for the understanding of the experimental groups of the
1960s and 1970s is Franco Quadri’s L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia:
Materiali (1960-1976), which is probably still the most complete survey of
experimental theatre from 1960 to 1976.30 Quadri was a keen observer of
the work of the avant-garde groups that opposed mainstream theatre. In the
long introduction he discusses experimental theatre in general, and the
influence that foreign experiences like the American Living Theatre may
have had on it. Then he examines the work done by the protagonists of that
theatrical season, like Bene and de Berardinis, and by smaller groups all
over Italy. The book also includes a very detailed bibliography of the
‘avanguardie storiche’ (the avant-garde movements of the first decades of
the twentieth century), of foreign theatre groups and movements, of the
Italian neo-avant-garde of the 1960s, and of single Italian groups.
Other books that consider the theatrical experimentation of the 1960s
and its developments in the 1970s and 1980s are Giuseppe Bartolucci’s, La
scrittura scenica and Testi critici 1964-1987, collections of his writings for
29
Marco De Marinis, Il Nuovo Teatro 1947-1970 (Milano: Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri,
Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas, 1987); Daniela Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia:
1959-1967 (Corazzano [Pisa]: Titivillus, 2010).
30
Franco Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia (Torino: Einaudi, 1977).
27
various papers and magazines.31 They also contain writings by other critics
like Edoardo Fadini, Corrado Augias, and Franco Quadri, that is the group
of dissident critics who played a fundamental role for the diffusion and
appreciation of the theatre of the experimental groups. Just a few of the
writings are dedicated to Shakespearian adaptations.
Italian and foreign theatre in the second half of the twentieth century
is also investigated by Paolo Puppa in Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo
Novecento; by Roberto Tessari in Teatro e avanguardie storiche; and by
Cesare Molinari in Teatro e antiteatro dal dopoguerra a oggi.32 Molinari
dedicates a section of the book to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays
concentrating on Hamlet and on the encounter between Bene and
Shakespeare. Apart from this section, none of the books is specifically on
Shakespeare.
When we come to the Shakespearian productions by de Berardinis,
literature is almost nonexistent. There is nothing in English except an article
by De Marinis that was originally written in Italian and subsequently
translated into English, entitled ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’.33 The
article was the result of a long interview that De Marinis was given by de
Berardinis, focusing on his adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays.
Even literature in Italian on de Berardinis is scant. The only book
that gives a detailed account of his life and of his theatre is Gianni
Manzella’s La bellezza amara: arte e vita di Leo de Berardinis.34 The book
is an essay written in a narrative form. For this reason it is very pleasant to
read, and through Manzella’s poetical style, it leads the reader into the
poetry of de Berardinis’s theatre. The work of this protagonist of the Italian
31
Giuseppe Bartolucci, La scrittura scenica (Roma: Lerici, 1968); Testi critici 1964-1987,
ed. Valentina Valentini and Giancarlo Mancini (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007).
32
Paolo Puppa, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Novecento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1990);
Roberto Tessari, Teatro e avanguardie storiche (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2005); Cesare
Molinari, Teatro e antiteatro dal dopoguerra a oggi (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2007).
33
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare: The Theatre Transcended’, New Theatre
Quarterly, 7.25 (1991), 49-63.
34
Gianni Manzella, La bellezza amara: arte e vita di Leo de Berardinis (Firenze: La casa
Usher, 2010).
28
theatre of research, is illustrated in the wider context of the revolution of
Italian theatre that took place in the 1960s.
La terza vita di Leo: gli ultimi vent’anni del teatro di Leo de
Berardinis a Bologna edited by Claudio Meldolesi is mainly composed of
recollections by people who knew and/or worked with de Berardinis.35
Because of the scarcity of sources, I have also relied on the words of
actress Elena Bucci, who worked with de Berardinis for ten years and has
now her own company. In May 2012 she granted me a long interview, the
focus of which was the work that de Berardinis did with Shakespeare’s
plays, but it widened to cover the actor-director’s idea of theatre and of the
staging of the classics. The chapter on de Berardinis of my thesis is the only
exisiting discussion of his theatre in English. It does not consider all his
stagings of Shakespeare’s plays, but most of them, and stretches from the
first youth experiments with Perla Peragallo to his mature works of the
1990s. Moreover, I contrast his theatre with the director’s theatre, and I
suggest that, with his emphasis on the actor, de Berardinis resumes the
typically Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte on the one hand, and the
Shakespearian tradition on the other. I also highlight the elements of his
theatre that, despite very free interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays, are
paradoxically very Shakespearian.
Literature in English on Bene is also practically nonexistent. In fact
there are no books on him. The most comprehensive source is Joseph
Farrell’s essay ‘Revolutionizing Tradition’.36 The essay offers a thorough
insight into the theatre of Bene, and discusses the way in which Bene
approached the classics. The scholar suggests that Bene’s theatre is ‘a
meditation on theatre’, as the main aim of theatre, copying reality, is
completely banished.37
35
La terza vita di Leo: gli ultimi vent’anni del teatro di Leo de Berardinis a Bologna, ed.
Claudio Meldolesi (Corazzano [Pisa]: Titivillus, 2010).
36
Joseph Farrell, ‘Revolutionizing Tradition’, in Theatre, Opera, and Performance in Italy
from the Fifteenth Century to the Present: Essays in Honour of Richard Andrews ed. Brian
Richardson, Simon Gilson and Catherine Keen (Egham: The Society for Italian Studies,
2004).
37
Farrell; ‘Revolutionizing Tradition’, p. 294.
29
Literature in Italian is quite rich. The most complete study of Bene’s
theatre is probably Piergiorgio Giacché’s Carmelo Bene: antropologia di
una macchina attoriale.38 The book takes into account the influence that
Bene’s south Italian origins had on his future career, and it explores all the
aspects (the idea of the impossibility to represent a text on the stage; the
continuous variation that is at the basis of his stagings; and the importance
of sounds and music, just to mention a few) that characterize Bene’s theatre
from the beginnings to its more mature forms.
On the relationship between Bene and Shakespeare we can mention
Gianfranco Bartalotta’s Carmelo Bene e Shakespeare.39 The book provides
a close reading of some of Bene’s Shakespearian adaptations, from his
various Amleti to Romeo e Giulietta, Riccardo III, Otello, and Macbeth.
Bartalotta frequently quotes from the scripts of the productions, and
evaluates the development of Bene’s theatre from the first stagings to his
more mature works.
Armando Petrini’s Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue per Carmelo
Bene analyses the five stage adaptations of Bene’s Amleto between 1962
and 1975.40 There is no reference to Hommelette for Hamlet (1987) and
Hamlet Suite (1994), as the author considers the first five productions as a
compact body that develop a common idea, while – he claims – the last two
offer a less rich and less problematic scenic language. I do not completely
agree with Petrini because the 1987 and the 1994 productions introduce
some elements that were not present in the previous ones, although they do
not seem to contain that innovative drive that characterized the first
productions.
Differently from Petrini’s book, Enrico Baiardo and Roberto
Trovato’s Un classico del rifacimento: l’Amleto di Carmelo Bene is a
survey of the cinema versions of Bene’s Amleto. The book is a useful guide
38
Piergiorgio Giacché, Carmelo Bene: antropologia di una macchina attoriale, 2nd edn
(1997; Milano: Bompiani, 2007).
39
Gianfranco Bartalotta, Carmelo Bene e Shakespeare (Roma: Bulzoni, 2000).
40
Armando Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue per Carmelo Bene (Sesto
Fiorentino [Firenze]: edizioni ETS, 2005).
30
to watch the videos of these productions, and offers ample excerpts from the
scripts.41
My discussion of Bene’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays draws
from all these sources, out of which I have conceived my own reading of
Bene’s theatre and of his approach to Shakespeare. My interest lies in
contrasting Bene’s rewriting of the classics, and of Shakespeare in
particular, with Strehler’s concern with fidelity to the text, and in highliting
the elements that make his theatre a very Shakespearian theatre.
There are three more volumes in Italian on Shakespearian
adaptations in Italy, that I have used and have been very helpful. These are
Amleto in Italia nel Novecento by Gianfranco Bartalotta; Macbeth in Italia
by Isabella Aradas; and Visone’s L’ombra di Lear.42 The merit of the three
books is that they make a comparative study of productions of Hamlet, of
Macbeth, and of King Lear in Italy. The first gives account of the most
important productions of Hamlet in the twentieth century. Therefore,
differently from my research, it does not consider the stagings by the
nineteenth-century Great Actors. On the other hand, Aradas’s book
predominantly focuses on the nineteenth century, while less attention is
devoted to the twentieth. Both scholars consider stagings by a high number
of actors and directors, whereas my research gives a more thorough insight
into the work of those I have chosen, which I consider as case studies to
explore the questions I have posed in the introduction, and to make a
comparison between the actor’s theatre, the director’s theatre, and the New
Theatre. Visone’s book is the most comprehensive. The scholar analyses
adaptations of King Lear from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the
twentieth, and focuses both on the drive and on the resistance that
characterized the shift from the actor’s theatre to the director’s theatre.
Unlike the books I have just mentioned, some sections of my thesis offer a
comparative study with Shakespearian productions in Britain, along with
41
Enrico Baiardo and Roberto Trovato, Un classico del rifacimento: l’Amleto di Carmelo
Bene (Genova: Erga, 1996).
42
Bartalotta, Amleto in Italia nel Novecento (Bari: Adriatica, 1986); Isabella Aradas,
Macbeth in Italia (Bari: Adriatica, 1989); Visone, L’ombra di Lear (Roma: Bulzoni, 2004).
31
references to the theatre at the time of Shakespeare. Finally, my work also
examines in detail some important events in the evolution of Italian theatre,
such as the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro and its significance, and the
birth and development of the New Theatre. While these sections are not
directly linked to my discussion of Shakespearian stagings, they lay the
groundwork to understand the productions better, and explore some
fundamental occurrences within the development of theatre in Italy, that
may not be known to English-speaking readers
My research can certainly be seen in the context of what is known as
‘global Shakespeares’. Among the scholars who have investigated the field,
Kennedy is one of the most authoritative. His Foreign Shakespeare:
Contemporary Performance, which I referred to before, is a collection of
essays that discuss Shakespeare performance outside the English-speaking
theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. The aim of these essays
is to trace the differences exiting between stagings of Shakespeare’s plays in
Britain and those in other European countries. In the introduction Kennedy
draws the attention to various issues concerning foreign-language
productions, and suggests that, if something gets lost in the transference
from English to another language, ‘foreign performances may have a more
direct access to the power of the plays.’43 He also notices that while for
many Anglophone Shakespearians translating Shakespeare’s English into
modern English is anathema, the translation into foreign modern languages
is common practice.
Kennedy continues his exploration into global Shakespeare in the
already-mentioned Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of TwentiethCentury Performance. Here the scholar looks at the relationship between
scenography and foreign Shakespeare, in order to explore how the visual
transmits meaning on the stage. Kennedy investigates this aspect by
exploring home and foreign adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. He
43
Kennedy, Foreign Shakespeare, p. 5.
32
examines the work of Theodore Komisarjevsky, Brecht, Josef Svoboda, and
Strehler, just to mention a few.
World-wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and
Performance edited by Sonia Massai differs from previous collections of
‘global Shakespeares’, which do not usually include non-European
adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, as it focuses on appropriations from a
wide range of geographical locations, such as Mexico and China.44
Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s idea that ‘the producer of a work of art is not
the artist but the field of production as a universe of belief which produces
the value of the work of art as a fetish’, Massai points out that it is necessary
to consider Shakespeare as the sum of the responses that his plays elicit.45 In
other words, the response of Italian critics, and Italian audiences to
Shakespeare’s work – the subject of my research – contributes to shape it.
The series International Shakespeare edited by Patricia Kennan and
Mariangela Tempera offers a numbers of essays by various scholars who
address diverse issues like the transposition of Shakespeare’s plays from
page to stage; Shakespeare on the international stage; Shakespeare in
translation; the reception of Shakespeare by foreign cultures; and
Shakespeare in opera and in cinema, just to mention a few. The series is
composed of two volumes, International Shakespeare: The Tragedies, and
International Shakespeare: The Comedies.46 International Shakespeare: The
Histories has not been published yet. The series was preceded by the
volume Shakespeare from Text to Stage, in which the first set of essays is
primarily text-based, while the second explores stage and performance.
Through the close reading of the theatre adaptations I have chosen, I
explore most of these issues in my research, but I am also interested in
asking the same questions about avant-garde stagings, and to assess whether
44
World-wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance ed. Sonia
Massai (London: Routledge, 2005).
45
Quoted in World-wide Shakespeares, p. 6.
46
International Shakespeare: The Tragedies, ed. Patricia Kennan and Mariangela Tempera
(Bologna: CLUEB, 1996); International Shakespeare: The Comedies, ed. Kennan and
Tempera (Bologna: CLUEB, 2004); Shakespeare from Text to Stage, ed. Kennan and
Tempera (Bologna: CLUEB 1992).
33
they preserve a Shakespearian spirit despite being very free interpretations
of the playtexts. Certainly, the above-mentioned collections have proved
useful theoretical and methodological models, and have helped me shape
my ideas about how to develop my own methodology.
From this survey of primary and secondary sources it should be clear
that literature in English on the topic of theatre adaptations of Shakespeare’s
plays in Italy is scant. Therefore, my work makes a contribution to the field
of ‘global Shakespeares’. Furthermore, although there are various sources
that explore the development of Italian theatre in terms of acting and
directing, there are none (and certainly not in English) that base such
exploration on the work done by actors and directors with Shakespeare’s
plays. As well as this, there is no scholarly work, either in English or in
Italian that compares and contrasts Italian theatre adaptations of
Shakespeare’s plays in the theatre of the nineteenth-century actors, of the
twentieth-century directors, and of the actor-directors of the Nuovo Teatro.
My exploration is twofold, and this contributes to the originality of my
work. Finally, the use of the interviews I have been granted makes my
discussion more interesting.
34
1. The Reception of Shakespeare in Italy (1667-mid19th century)
The acceptance of Shakespeare in Italy involved a long gestation
period, and strong resistance to the novelty that his plays represented within
the context of Italian theatre that, as far as the first half of the nineteenth
century, was still permeated by classical rules. The irregularity of
Shakespeare’s texts, and the freedom in style and content that characterized
them, seemed to be anxiety provoking in the Italian intellectual circles, and
the challenge to the ‘sacredness’ of the rules, was seen as undermining of
the status quo of theatre and of society.
In this first chapter I am going to tell the story of how Shakespeare’s
plays arrived in Italy, focusing on the hard work of a number of people
operating in different fields and having different skills, who had to struggle
to spread knowledge of Shakespeare in the country, and to make his plays
accepted and loved. Such people were scholars, writers, translators,
composers, and actors, who travelled, learned English to understand the
original texts or worked on French translations, broke rules, and defied
generally accepted ideas about theatre and culture in general. The debate
over Romantic issues was fought in the name of Shakespeare, and it was
only around mid-nineteenth century, that Shakespeare’s status in the cultural
imagination was fully established, and the Italian theatre audience, finally
recognized the greatness of the English playwright.
**********
1.1 From the First Mention of Shakespeare to Francesco De
Sanctis
While all through the sixteenth century a considerable number of
Italian people travelled to England for commercial reasons, in the
35
seventeenth century this number decreased significantly. The execution of
Charles I shocked the Italians, and added to the already existing distrust of
the English on account of their religion. Only with the Restoration did some
interest in the northern island revive which, however, did not include the
literary field. As for William Shakespeare, public awareness of the English
playwright developed in Italy much later than in other European countries
and at the beginning of the eighteenth century he was still almost
completely unknown in the peninsula.
The first mention of his name is to be found in a list attributed to the
Florentine linguist, essayist and diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti who, according
to Piero Rebora,1 was in England in 1667. The list reads as follows:
‘Chacius, Spenns, Drayton, Shakespier, Johnson, Bemont comico, Flesher
comico (…)’.2 We have nothing more than that name even though,
according to Anna Maria Crinò, the first Italian translation of Hamlet’s
monologue ‘To be or not to be’, may be attributed to Magalotti.3 In his
Teatro Britanico, published in London in 1683, the Milanese Gregorio Leti
makes a comment on English theatre without mentioning the name of
Shakespeare or his works: ‘splendid and magnificent theatres deserve to be
seen by foreigners … for all that concerns the scenes of the comedies, the
skill of the actors, the inventions and designs and everything else; they are
in advance of the other theatres of Europe’.4 And a firm proof of the
ignorance of the Italians about Shakespeare is the fact that the Venetian
writer Apostolo Zeno wrote his melodrama Ambleto (1705) going back to
the original source, Saxo Gramaticus,5 whereas there is no trace of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet in his work.
1
‘Fortuna e comprensione di Shakespeare in Italia’, in Piero Rebora, Interpretazioni
Anglo-Italiane (Bari: Adriatica, 1961), 43-62 (p.49) and ‘Magalotti e gli Inglesi’ in the
same book, 163-189 (p. 167).
2
Rebora, ‘Magalotti e gli Inglesi’, p. 173.
3
Anna Maria Crinò, ‘An Unknown “Verso sciolto” Translation of Hamlet’s Soliloquy “To
Be or not To Be” in the Archivio Magalotti’, Shakespeare Today: Directions and Methods
of Research, ed. Keir Elam (Firenze: La casa Usher, 1984), 215-220. The essay contains the
transcript of the English original and the Italian translation that A. M. Crino’ found in the
filza 174 of the Archivio Magalotti.
4
Quoted in Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, pp. 2-3.
5
For a good analysis of this see Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy.
36
The first Italian who expressed an opinion on Shakespeare was the
physicist, mathematician, philosopher and historian Antonio Schinella Conti
(1677-1749). It was contained in ‘Risposta del Signor Abate Antonio Conti
al Signore Jacopo Martelli’ prefacing Conti’s tragedy Il Cesare and
appeared in 1726. Here Conti wrote:
Sasper [sic] e’ il Cornelio degl’Inglesi, ma molto piu’ irregolare del
Cornelio, sebbene al pari di lui pregno di grandi idee, e di nobili
sentimenti.6
Sasper[sic] is the Corneille of the English, but much more irregular
than Corneille though, like him, full of great ideas and of noble
sentiments. (All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated).
Conti, who spent three years in England where he arrived in 1715,
was still imbued with classical theories and French taste as he had been to
Paris. Referring to Julius Caesar, he pointed out that Shakespeare did not
observe the Aristotelian rules, though he admitted that this allowed much
more emotional freedom, which would please the public much better:
Ristringendomi qui a parlare del suo Cesare, il Sasper lo fa morire al
terzo atto; il rimanente della Tragedia è occupato dall’aringa di Marcantonio al Popolo, indi dalle guerre e dalla morte di Cassio e di Bruto.
Può maggiormente violarsi l’unità del tempo, dell’azione, e del luogo?
Ma gl’Inglesi disprezzarono fino al Catone le regole d’Aristotile per la
ragione, che la Tragedia è fatta per piacere, e che ottima ella è allora
che piace.7
Talking about his Caesar, Shakespeare has him die in the third act; the
remaining part of the tragedy is occupied by Marc-Antony’s harangue
to the people and by Cassio’s and Brutus’s deaths. Could he have
6
Il Cesare tragedia del Sig. Abate Antonio Conti nobile veneto con alcune cose concernenti
l’opera medesima (Faenza: Archi, 1726), p. 54.
7
Ibid., pp. 54-55.
37
violated the unities of place, of action and of time more? But the
English have despised the Aristotelian rules since Cato, because
tragedy is written to be liked and it is excellent when people like it.
But he did not follow this example when he wrote his Il Cesare,
though he may have been influenced by Shakespeare’s work. Critics
disagree on whether Conti had substantial and direct knowledge of
Shakespeare’s plays: Collison-Morley, for example, concluded in 1916 that
Conti only knew Shakespeare through conversations with friends and
justifies his opinion by hinting at the wrong spelling of Shakespeare
(Sasper) and at the fact that, referring to Othello, Conti mentioned an
English tragedy but not its author.8 In her book Le traduzioni di
Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento, Anna Maria Crinò finds it unlikely that
Conti never read anything by this author who was so much talked about at
the time of his stay in the country, and believes that Conti had most
probably Shakespeare in mind when highlighting the qualities of English
tragedies. It is also true that Conti did not mention Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar when he illustrated the reasons that moved him to write his tragedy
Il Cesare, but admitted that he would not have embarked on the writing if he
had not been in England.9
Paolo Rolli (1687-1756) – poet, librettist and scholar – arrived in
England in the same year as Conti. Rolli spoke English well since he was in
London from 1715 to 1744. He was a strenuous defender of Shakespeare
and his most important contribution to the development of the playwright’s
reception in Italy was his translation of Hamlet’s monologue ‘To be or not
to be’.10 The accuracy of his translation reveals Rolli’s good understanding
of the original text as the sample I am giving below shows:
To be, or not to be – that is the Essere o no, la gran Questione è
8
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, p. 8.
Crino’, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento, pp. 34-35.
10 This was thought to be the first translation into Italian of a passage from a play by
Shakespeare until Crinò drew attention to the previous one by Magalotti.
38
9
question;
questa:
Whether ʼtis nobler in the mind to Qual nella mente è forte più? Soffrire
Colpi e Saette d’oltraggiosa Sorte;
suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous O prender l’Armi contra un mar
d’Affanni,
fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of E dar loro, in opporsi, a un tratto il
troubles
fine?
And by opposing end them; to die: Morir! Dormire: Altro non è. Nel
to sleep –
Sonno,
No more, and by a sleep to say we Dicon, che fine avrà il Cordoglio, e
end
mille,
The heartache and the thousand Retaggio della carne, altre sciagure.12
natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.11
In the Preface to his translation of Paradise Lost by Milton published in
Verona in 1730, he speaks quite extensively about Shakespeare:
Il primo fra gl’Inglesi che felicemente usasse il verso sciolto fu
Guglielmo Shakespear [sic], nato nel 1564 e morto nel 1616.
Gentiluomo che nel Regno della Regina Elisabetta elevò il Teatro
Inglese ad insuperabile sublimità con le sue Tragedie (…). Questo
prodigioso ingegno (…) scrisse alcune Tragedie che io chiamerei
Istoriche, poiché rappresentano tratti istorici de i Re e Patrizj illustri
della sua nazione; ed in queste i fatti ed i caratteri de’ Personaggi
11 Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Second Quarto, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor,
Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: Methuen, 2006), 3.1.55-62.
12 Crinò, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento, p. 38.
39
interlocutori sono così viva [sic] e poeticamente e con adattissimo
stile espressi; che nulla più.13
The first among the English who beautifully used the blank verse
was Guglielmo Shakespear, who was born in 1564 and died in 1616.
A gentleman who, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, elevated
English drama to unequalled sublimity with his tragedies (…). This
wondrous genius (…) wrote certain tragedies which I would call
historical, since they represent historical happenings concerning the
illustrious kings and nobles of his nation: and in these the events and
the characters that participate are so vivid and so poetically
expressed with most fitting style as not to be bettered.14
Rolli was also the first who mentioned Shakespeare together with Dante:
Secondo che di lui dico quel che asserisco del Dante; cioè ch’eglino
due soli mi fanno altamente meravigliare d’aver i primi tanto
sublilmente poetato nella loro lingua.15
I can say of him what I can say of Dante: that they are the only ones
who make me marvel at how sublimely they have written poetry.
It is necessary, at this point, to mention the name of Francois-Marie
Arouet (1694-1778), better known as Voltaire, whose engagement with the
work of Shakespeare was extremely useful to the knowledge of the English
playwright in France and outside France. Voltaire’s relationship with
Shakespeare was a long one, starting with his first thoughts contained in
Essai sur la poésie épique (1728), followed by the preface to his tragedy
Brutus (1730), his Lettres philosophiques (1734), the article Art Dramatique
contained in Le Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764) and Les Lettres a
13
‘Vita di Giovanni Milton’ preface to Il Paradiso Perduto: poema inglese di Giovanni
Milton tradotto dal Sig. Paolo Rolli con le annotazioni di G. Addison (Parigi: Bartolomeo
Occhi, 1758), V-LXIV (pp. LI-LII).
14
From Agostino Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, p. 532.
15
Ibid.
40
l’Academie written after the publication in France of the first two volumes
of Le Tourneur’s translation of Shakespeare’s plays. At that time, Voltaire
was the commanding critical voice in much of Europe and this was
especially true of Italy. We will see how some of the opinions expressed on
Shakespeare in Italy are just a reflection of Voltaire’s statements. His
attitude was mixed: on the one hand Voltaire admired the genius of the
English playwright, on the other he could not accept Shakespeare’s disdain
of all the rules of classical literature. In particular what Voltaire and, as a
consequence, the great majority of Italian critics condemned, was the
mishmash of tragic and comic elements, bringing together noble people –
even Kings or Queens – and humble people, the use of a variety of language
types, from highly poetical to coarse and vulgar, the use of poetry and prose
in the same play, the presence of the fantastic, of the supernatural, and the
non-observance of the Aristotelian rules. While in his first writings Voltaire
expressed some positive remarks on the English playwright, later on – as the
general admiration for Shakespeare grew – these remarks became real
accusations.
A few quotations will clarify Voltaire’s attitude. He expresses his
disapproval very forcefully in Essai sur la poésie épique, which he wrote in
English. The original title was: An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France,
extracted from curious Manuscripts and also upon the Epick Poetry of the
European Nations, from Homer down to Milton, by Mr. de Voltaire. It was
issued by a London book-seller in 1727, and translated into French in two
distinct pieces of work. Here he states:
These plays are monsters of tragedy. There are some which cover a
period of several years; the hero is baptized in the first act and dies of
old age in the fifth. In them you see witches, peasants, drunkards,
clowns; gravediggers as they work sing drinking songs and play with
41
skulls. In brief, imagine whatever you can that is most monstrous and
absurd and you will find it in Shakespeare.16
In the Preface to his tragedy Brutus, Voltaire speaks of the English theatre
and explains why this theatre was not suitable to French taste:
Il a manqué jusqu’ à présent à presque tous les Auteurs Tragiques de
votre Nation, cette pureté, cette conduite réguliere, ces beinséances de
l’action & du stile, cette élégance, & toutes ces finesses de l’Art, qui
ont établi la réputation du Théatre François depuis le Grand
Corneille.17
What has been missing among all your nation’s tragic writers is the
purity, the ordinary discretion, the sense of propriety in action and
style, the elegance, and all the artful finesse which have established
the reputation of the French theatre since the time of the great
Corneille; but the most irregular of your plays have one great merit:
their sense of action.18
Again he refers to Shakespeare in particular in the XVIIIth letter
contained in his Philosophical Letters or Letters upon the English Nation
which were published in London in 1733, shortly before the first French
edition appeared.
Il avait un genie plein de force et de fécondité, de naturel et de
sublime, sans la moindre étincelle de bon goût, et sans la moindre
connaissance des règles. Je vais vous dire une chose hasardée, mais
vraie: c’est que le mérite de cet auteur a perdu le théâtre anglais; il y a
de si belles scènes, des morceaux si grands et si terrible répandus dans
16
Voltaire, ‘A Shakespeare Journal’, in Shakespeare in France, ed. Joseph H McMahon,
Yale French Studies, 33, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 5-13 (p. 6).
17
Le Brutus de Monsieur de Voltaire, avec un discours sur la tragedie, 2nd edn
(Amsterdam: E. J. Ledet & Compagnie, et Jaques Desbordes, 1731), p. 8.
18
Quoted in ‘A Shakespeare Journal’, p. 7.
42
ses farces monstrueuses qu’on appelle tragédies, que ces pièces ont
toujours été jouées avec un grand succèss.19
His genius was strong and fertile, full of nature and the sublime,
without the slightest spark of good taste, and without the least
understanding of the rules. I will tell you something daring but true:
the great accomplishments of this author doomed English theatre; he
gave us such beautiful scenes, such great and terrible moments
sprinkled through his monstrous farces, which some call tragedies,
that these plays have always been performed to great applause.20
Similar ideas can be found in the works mentioned at the beginning
(and of which Anna Maria Crinò gives a good analysis in her Le traduzioni
di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento).21 Voltaire’s mixed attitude became
little by little contempt but on the whole because of his fame, he contributed
significantly to arousing interest in Shakespeare.
Collison-Morley’s
Shakespeare
in
Italy,
Lombardo’s
essay
Shakespeare and Italian Criticism, and Crino’s just mentioned work, give a
detailed account of the influence of Voltaire’s ideas on Italian
Shakespearian criticism.22 In his letter to Abbé Franchini dated October
1735, the cultivated man and friend of Voltaire, Francesco Algarotti,
mentioned
the
‘faults
innumerable
and
thoughts
inimitable’
of
Shakespeare’s plays and ‘the barbarity of the English stage’. 23 In his Della
Storia e della Ragione d’Ogni Poesia (1743), Francesco Saverio Quadrio
simply repeated Voltaire’s words. He admitted that the English playwright
‘possessed a fertile and vigorous genius’ but ‘he had not as M. de Voltaire
says, the slightest acquaintance with the rules, nor are his poems anywhere
19
Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques (1733), ed. Frédéric Deloffre (Paris: Gallimards, 1986),
p. 124.
20
Voltaire, Philosophical Letters Or, Letters Regarding the English Nation (1733), ed.
John Leigh and trans. Prudence L. Steiner (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 2007), p. 69.
21
Crino’, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento, pp. 17-22.
22
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, Ch. 2; Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian
Criticism’; Crinò, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento, pp. 57-63.
23
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, pp. 18-19.
43
illuminated by the light of good taste. Hence, instead of benefiting the
English stage and correcting its defects, he brought it to utter ruin’.24 And,
like Voltaire, he considered Shakespeare’s plays ‘monstrous farces’. In
Discorso sopra le vicende della letteratura (1761), Carlo Denina affirmed
that no one gave more honour to or damaged English theatre more than
Shakespeare. He possessed a sublime genius, a great fire, prolific
imagination, and all the natural qualities which make a poet great, but he
was completely in the dark as to theatre rules.25 Jesuit Saverio Bettinelli
(1718-1808) defined Shakespeare ‘bestial, though sometimes sublime’26 and
Melchiorre Cesarotti (1730-1808) – though he had translated Ossian, thus
showing a liking for pre-romantic themes to which Shakespeare would be
assimilated – believed that Julius Caesar had ‘no merit’.27 Giambattista
Roberti thought that you must do more than ‘handle corpses like
Shakespeare’28 and Pietro Napoli-Signorelli, in his Storia Critica de’ Teatri
Antichi e Moderni (1777), once more blamed Shakespeare for the nonobservance of the rules. Shakespeare: ‘had no better knowledge of the rules
of probability than the Chinese. Like them he compressed the events of
thirty years into a performance of a few hours’.29
Scholar Giuseppe Baretti, among the few who appreciated
Shakespeare in Italy towards the middle of the eighteenth century, attacked
the opinions of Voltaire in his A Dissertation upon the Italian Poetry written
in English in 1753, in A Dissertation upon the Italian Tongue (1757) and
above all in Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur Voltaire (1778) –
which he wrote in French in order to be sure to be understood by the French
– and placed Shakespeare among the great figures of world literature.
Baretti knew England well as he stayed there in two successive periods,
from 1751 to 1760 and again from 1766 to his death in 1789. He had a good
24
Ibid., pp. 19-20.
Quotation given in Italian in Crinò, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento,
p. 59 and paraphrased by me in English.
26
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, p. 22.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., p. 23.
29
Ibid., p. 25.
44
25
command of English and blamed Voltaire for his imperfect knowledge of
the language, although Voltaire had spent over two years in England. In his
Discours, Baretti states:
Oui, Messieurs les François! Pour connaître Shakespeare il faut que
vous veniez à Londres. En y arrivant, il faut que vous vous mettiez à
étudier l’anglois (...) Il faut que vous examiniez ce peuple, non pas en
François, mais en Hommes.30
Yes, dear French! To know Shakespeare you have to come to London!
And when you are here, you have to take up studying English (…) and
examine this population not in French but as men.
And in an unpublished letter kept at Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington D.C., which according to the catalogue was addressed to
Samuel Johnson, he openly criticizes Voltaire:
Voltaire knows a peu pres just as much of English, as your tender
Misses do of French, which I took the liberty to term no knowledge at
all in a man that pretends to play the critick. (…) Believe me, Sir, that,
if Voltaire had ever been able to write such English language and such
English style during five or six years (…), he would have felt
Shakespeare at least as much as I do, Poet as he is.31
Baretti knew Samuel Johnson well and deeply admired him. It was
Dr Johnson who probably introduced him to the work of Shakespeare when
he arrived in England for the first time. Dr Johnson had written a long
Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) in which he upheld
Shakespeare’s work against those who discredited it – though also
30
Gaby Petrone Fresco, Shakespeare’s Reception in 18th Century Italy, p. 97; also in Rosa
Trillo Clough ‘Giuseppe Baretti, Figura di Critico Nuovo’, Italica, 30.4 (Dec., 1953), 209222 (p. 216).
31
Gustavo Costa, ‘Lettere inedite di Giuseppe Baretti’, Italica, 48.3 (Autumn, 1971), 353366 (p. 355).
45
highlighting a few defects. Reading Baretti’s Discours, Dr Johnson’s
influence on the Italian critic is evident. Dr Johnson wrote:
His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions
and principles by which all minds are agitated and the whole system
of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poems a
character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is
commonly a species. 32
And Baretti:
Une des plus grandes perfections de Shakespeare est celle de mettre
devant nos yeux des caractères qui sont très souvant des prototypes.
Les principaux personages dans ses Pièces ne répresentent point des
individus mais des espèces.33
One of the greatest achievements of Shakespeare is that of showing us
characters who are very often prototypes. The main characters in his
plays are not at all individuals, but a species.
Reading the works by the two writers in their entirety, the influence
of the first on the second becomes even clearer. Many of the issues that
Baretti engaged with hint at Dr Johnson’s Preface. Baretti played a primary
role in spreading a knowledge of English literature in Italy and he was a
central figure in Shakespeare criticism for his life-long commitment to the
study, defence and diffusion of the playwright’s work. Nevertheless, his
influence was not immediate: Italy seemed not to be ready to receive
Shakespeare’s plays as it was still permeated by classical models and taste.
This is confirmed by the lack of translations: the first attempts at
translating complete works by Shakespeare were only made towards the
mid-eighteenth century. And not always were the translations directly from
32
Samuel Johnson, ‘Preface to Shakespeare’ (1778), facs., introd. P. J. Smallwood.
(Bristol: Classical Press, 1985), pp. 4-5.
33
Quoted in Petrone Fresco, Shakespeare’s Reception in 18th Century Italy, p.103.
46
English into Italian: in 1769 Francesco Gritti translated Hamlet from an
adaptation by Jean-Francois Ducis (1733-1816), of Pierre-Antoine de la
Place’s (1707-1793) translation from English into French which appeared in
France in 1746!34 We can easily imagine how inaccurate this first translation
was if we consider that La Place’s translations were fragmentary; they were
rather paraphrases, very free variations on Shakespeare’s themes. And this
Hamlet was the first staging of a play by Shakespeare in Italy (1774).
Before Gritti, in 1756, Canon Domenico Valentini had translated Julius
Caesar without knowing English; he had English friends conversant with
Italian, who explained the whole play to him. Despite the difficulties that
Valentini must have faced, his translation was quite accurate.35 Differently
from what happened in France, Valentini made the attempt to be as faithful
as possible to the original text in his work.
Between 1769 and 1777 Alessandro Verri translated Hamlet in prose
but, for personal reasons, never published it. After Domenico Valentini’s
translation of Julius Caesar, this would have been the first translation of a
complete play from English into Italian.36 Alessandro Verri praised
Shakespeare as follows:
Questo autore mostra la vera strada della natura, e dopo d’averlo letto
si trovano artificiosi gli eroi del teatro francese ... Egli è vero pittore
della natura, gli altri sono manierati, questo dipinge sempre col nudo
avanti gli occhi ... Tutto è libero, è originale, è strano in
Shakespeare.37
This author shows the true path of Nature, and after reading him, one
finds the heroes of the French theatre artificial … He is the true
34
Jean-Francois Ducis was a French dramatist and adapter of Shakespeare’s plays. PierreAntoine de la Place was the first translator of Shakespeare in France apart from the few
attempts by Voltaire’s. The first volume of his Theatre Anglois was published in 1745.
35 As Crino’ affirms (p. 43), Valentini had the merit of justifying Shakespeare for not
observing the Aristotelian rules in a century when classicism was still dominant.
36 For a complete analysis of translations of Shakespeare’s plays in the XVIII century see
Crinò, Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento. See also Petrone Fresco.
37 Quoted in Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare e la critica italiana’, Sipario, June 1964, 2-13 ( p. 5)
47
painter of Nature; the others are mannered, he paints with the naked
model before his eyes … Everything in Shakespeare is free, original,
and strange.38
The ideas highlighted by Baretti, Alessandro Verri, and a few others
in Italy were already dominant in the German cultural area, where the
Romantic movement was spreading with its praise of Shakespeare: in his
work the Romantics found themes, characters, feelings – liberty of form,
unrest, melancholy – quite close to their new sensitivity. In particular
August Wilhelm Schlegel expressed his admiration for Shakespeare in his
Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1808-11) and translated some of the
plays. Schlegel distinguished between ‘classical’ dramatic literature
including the Greeks and their imitators, the French and the Italians, and
‘romantic’ dramatic literature, which included the Spanish and the English.
According to him, while the Greeks, the Spanish and the English were
original, the French and the Italians were not and, for this reason, he
considered their work much less valuable.39 Schlegel and other German
intellectuals like Hamann and Herder were fostering a different idea of
beauty, and their attitude to Shakespeare and to literature in general seems
to be more subjective than that of most Italians at the end of the eighteenth
century and beginning of the nineteenth. They suggested that there can be
works that are as beautiful as the ancient ones though they follow different
criteria that depend on the characteristics and conditions – political, social,
even climatic – of the country in which they are created. The notion of
relativism of taste, and the idea that critics should not judge a work of art in
abstract terms and according to general criteria, constituted a bad blow to
the principle of imitation.
This tendency found ampler scope in Italy in the course of the
nineteenth century. Ugo Foscolo was the first who, at the beginning of the
century, applied the historicist criterion to the evaluation of literature:
38
Quoted in Lombardo ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, p. 542.
August Wilhelm Schlegel, ‘Erste Vorlesung’, in Über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur
(Heidelberg: Moor und Zimmer, 1809), 3-43.
48
39
Gli egregi lavori del genio dell’uomo non saranno mai probabilmente
stimati da chi guarda il genio diviso dall’uomo e l’uomo dalle fortune
della vita e de’ tempi ... a intendere le parole degli scrittori più di mille
commentatori giova la conoscenza delle loro anime.40
The remarkable works of man’s genius will never be valued by those
who look at the genius as separated from man and man from the
fortunes of life and times … to understand the writers’ words it is the
knowledge of their soul that counts more than the work of a thousand
commentators.
A work of art is the creation of an individual endowed with the gift
of ‘genius’, influenced in his creation by his life conditions and the fortunes
of his times. What Foscolo implies here is that an artwork is not only that
which results from the imitation of the classics. Ugo Foscolo knew
Shakespeare and admired him. We find passages in his Ultime lettere di
Jacopo Ortis where the influence of the new Romantic movement –
Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther – and of Shakespeare is evident. In
letter LVI, for example, there is a clear reference to one of Hamlet’s
monologues:
Uomo debole! Perché te ne stai qui, timido, irresoluto come un
fanciullo che inoltri il mal fermo piede nel bujo della notte? –
Incomprensibile eternità! Non sei tu no tanto spaventosa ed orrenda!
Ma chi senza di te potrebbe soffrir una esistenza così penosa, viver fra
cotanti scellerati, spirar l’aure de’ vizi, trascinarsi dietro le miserie, le
persecuzioni, gli affanni? 41
Weak man! Why are you here, shy, irresolute, like a boy taking
faltering steps in the dark night? Incomprehensible eternity! No, you
40
Quoted in Mario Puppo, Manuale critico-bibliografico per lo studio della letteratura
italiana, 13th edn (Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1980), p. 46.
41 Quoted in Mario Corona, La fortuna di Shakespeare a Milano (1800-1825) (Bari:
Adriatica Editore, 1970), p. 20.
49
are not that frightening and horrendous! But who, without you, would
live such miserable life among villains and bear the vices, the
miseries, the persecutions, the troubles?
In the letter of 13 May 1798 Jacopo mentions Shakespeare together with
Homer and Dante as heralds of the new Romantic sensibility:
Omero, Dante e Shakespeare, tre maestri di tutti gl’ingegni sovrumani,
hanno investito la mia immaginazione ed infiammato il mio cuore: ho
bagnato di caldissime lagrime i loro versi; e ho adorato le loro ombre
divine come se le vedessi assise su le volte eccelse che sovrastano
l’universo a dominare l’eternità.42
Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, three masters of all the superhuman
minds, have taken possession of my heart and inflamed it: I have
moistened their verses with burning tears; and I have adored their
divine shades as if I saw them seated on the high peaks that tower
above the universe to dominate humankind.
In the last part of the book, when Jacopo Ortis has made up his mind
to commit suicide, Foscolo’s knowledge of Macbeth becomes clear.43 More
than once do Jacopo’s words remind us of Macbeth’s vision of the dagger,
for example. It is in fact with a dagger that Jacopo kills himself:
Ahi Lorenzo! Eccolo quel demonio mio persecutore; (…) e perché mi
caccia fra le mani un pugnale ?44
Alas Lorenzo! There is that demon who persecutes me; (…) and why
does he place a dagger in my hands?
42
Ugo Foscolo, Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1801), ed. Carlo Muscetta, 8th edn
(Torino: Einaudi, 1973), p. 65.
43
See Aradas, Macbeth in Italia.
44
Foscolo, Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, p. 129.
50
Foscolo speaks widely about Shakespeare in his article Della nuova
scuola drammatica in Italia (1826) where he outlines some of the features
of Shakespeare’s plays. Of his historical plays he stressed that he made them
interesting:
per l’esattezza con che sapeva delineare i personaggi reali di principi
passati, per la varietà d’incidenti e di caratteri che v’introduceva, per
la sua cognizione della umana natura, e soprattutto per il fuoco
luminoso e continuo che la sua immaginazione ed il suo cuore
ispiravano nei suoi versi (...). Ma nell’ Otello e nell’Amleto e nel
Macbeth (...), i caratteri sono sua invenzione e quindi più originali
insieme e più veri, perché vi contribuiva tutta l’umana natura (...).45
through the exactness with which he drew the real characters of past
princes, through the variety of incident and character, through his
knowledge of human nature, and above all the luminous and constant
fire that his heart and imagination inspired in his verses (...) But in
Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth (...), the characters are more his own
invention and therefore more original and also more true because to
their creation contributed the whole of human nature (...).46
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), the spokesman and supreme
authority of Milanese and Italian Romanticism, despite being unfamiliar
with English and reading Shakespeare in French, was the one through whom
the reception of Shakespeare in Italy entered a new, positive phase.
Manzoni’s contribution to the debate on Shakespeare is part of the wider
debate on Romanticism that took place in Italy at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. In her article ‘De l’esprit des traductions’ translated in
Italian with the title ‘Sulla maniera e sulla utilità delle traduzioni’, which
appeared in January 1816 in the periodical La Biblioteca Italiana, Mme de
Stael invited the Italians not to be prejudiced against foreign authors and to
45
46
Quoted in Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare e la critica italiana’, p. 6.
Quoted in Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, p. 546
51
broaden their culture – thus hinting at Italian provincialism – and valued the
work of translators as necessary to spread culture which, in her opinion, is a
shared wealth that should be enjoyed by anyone without distinction of
country:
Sarebbe auspicabile, mi sembra, che gli italiani si occupassero di
tradurre con cura le nuove poesie degli inglesi e dei tedeschi.47
It would be desirable that the Italians carefully translated the new
poems of the English and of the Germans.
Among the English, the first modern author whom she mentioned was
Shakespeare. In De la littérature published in 1800 she maintained that:
Lorsqu’on se pénètre uniquement des modèles de l’art dramatiquie
dans l’antiquité; lorsqu’on imite l’imitation, on a moins d’originalité;
on n’a pas ce genie immediate, si je puis m’exprimer ainsi, qui
characterise particulièrement Shakespeare. Depuis les Grecs jusqu’à
lui, nous voyons toutes les literatures deriver les unes des autres, en
partant de la meme source. Shakespeare commence une literature
nouvelle.48
When one is only imbued with the dramatic models of classical
antiquity, when one imitates imitation, one is less original, one has not
got that genius that springs from nature, that immediate genius, if I
can put it like that, that characterizes Shakespeare in particular. From
the Greeks up to him, we see all the literatures derive from the same
source, Shakespeare begins a new literature.
47
Quoted in Maddalena Pennacchia, ‘Mme de Stael, Shakespeare e l’Italia’, in Memoria di
Shakespeare, ed. Lombardo (Roma: Bulzoni 2000), 173-184 (p. 179). See this essay for a
good analysis of Mme de Stael’s criticism on Shakespeare and her influence on the Italian
Romantic debate known as ‘la querelle romantica’.
48
Madame de Stael, De la Littérature (1800), ed. Gérard Gengembre and Jean Goldzink
(Paris: Flammarion, 1991), p. 217.
52
Her article, together with A. W. Schlegel’s Vorlesungen über
dramatische Kunst und Literatur published in 1809 and translated in Italian
by Giovanni Gherardini (Milano, 1817) with the title Corso di letteratura
drammatica, were the sources of heated discussions within Milanese
intellectual circles. Giovanni Berchet’s Lettera Semiseria di Grisostomo,
regarded as the manifesto of Italian Romanticism, appeared in 1816;
between 1818 and 1819, Silvio Pellico published his articles on drama in the
Conciliatore; in 1819 the ‘Dialogo sulle unità drammatiche’ by Ermes
Visconti appeared in the same journal. Manzoni’s Il Conte di Carmagnola
with the author’s Preface in which he illustrates his ideas about a new kind
of drama, was published in 1820 and his Lettre a M. Chauvet, where he
carries the topic started in the Preface much further, in 1823 (though he had
written it in 1820) together with Claude Fauriel’s translation of his tragedies
Il Conte di Carmagnola and Adelchi. Lombardo affirms that ‘all the
writings that contribute to the debate on Romanticism deal, directly or
indirectly, with Shakespeare’.49 Shakespeare was seen as the symbol of
liberty for his non-observance of classical rules and for the passion with
which his plays were imbued. More than in other European countries, in
Italy Romanticism had a political connotation. After the fall of Napoleon
and the restoration of reactionary governments, the Romantics were looked
at with suspicion and the ideals fostered by Mme de Stael, for example,
were deemed subversive. Defence of classical models, therefore, did not
only mean sticking to a certain artistic pattern, but also fighting against
dangerous revolutionary ideas. And to the rejection of new Romantic artistic
models corresponded the rejection of Shakespeare, while the praise of the
English playwright went together with the praise of Romanticism.
Manzoni kept aloof from this political dimension; nevertheless he
strenuously defended the work of Shakespeare. He stated that literature has
‘the useful as its goal, the true as its subject, and the interesting as its
49
Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, p. 549.
53
means’.50 His central point was the opposition of the ‘real’ to the ‘ideal’,
and he believed that it is in reality, in truth that the author should search the
material for his art, which is aimed to ‘the betterment and the salvation of
the reader’s soul’.51 The moral improvement of the reader, according to
Manzoni, is the principal objective of any art and he believed that the
observance of the rules limits the possibilities of art, prevents the artist from
expressing the truth and, as a consequence, from contributing to the moral
education of the reader. He found all that he fostered in the work of
Shakespeare, which, in his opinion, was highly moral.52 These thoughts are
clearly expressed by Manzoni in the Preface to his tragedy Il Conte di
Carmagnola where he does not mention the name of Shakespeare, but
clearly hints at him while debating on Romantic drama, in his Lettre à M.
Chauvet, which he wrote in French in response to Victor Chauvet’s review
of his Il Conte di Carmagnola, and in his Materiali Estetici published by
Bonghi in 1887.
In the Preface he explains why the issue of the observance of the rules
is based on a false supposition:
L’unità di luogo, e la così detta unità di tempo, non sono regole
fondate nella ragione dell’arte né connaturali all’indole del poema
drammatico; ma sono venute da una autorità non bene intesa, e da
principi arbitrari (…). Quando poi vennero quelli che, non badando
all’autorità, domandarono la ragione di queste regole, i fautori di esse
non seppero trovarne che una ed è: che, assistendo lo spettatore
realmente alla rappresentazione d’un’azione, diventa per lui
inverisimile che le diverse parti di questa avvengano in diversi luoghi,
e che essa duri per lungo tempo, mentre lui sa di non essersi mosso di
luogo, e d’aver impiegate solo poche ore ad osservarla. Questa ragione
è evidentemente fondata su un falso supposto, cioè che lo spettatotore
50
G. A. Borghese, ‘Literary Criticism in Italy during the Romantic Period’, Italica, 23.2
(Jun., 1946), 65-72 (p. 66).
51
Ibid.
52
See Natalino Sapegno’s Preface to La lettre a` M. Chauvet, ed. N. Sapegno (Roma:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1947).
54
sia lì come parte dell’azione; quando è, per così dire, una mente
estrinseca che la contempla (...). Quando si considera che lo spettatore
è fuori dall’azione, l’argomento in favore delle unità svanisce.53
The unity of place and the so-called unity of time have not been
deduced from art’s principles, nor are they connatural with dramatic
poetry. They come to us from an ill-conceived authority and from
arbitrary principles (...). Subsequently, when some, in utter disregard
for authority, demanded the reasons for such rules, their advocates
could not find but one; that is, because the spectator watches in his
flesh and bones the performance of an action, it becomes
nonverisimilar that that action might develop in different places and
last for a long time, while the spectator knows that he did not leave his
place and that only a few hours have elapsed since he began watching
the action. But this reason clearly rests on a false premise; that is, that
the spectator is there as part of the action, whereas he is, so to speak, a
mind contemplating from the outside (...). If one considers the
spectator outside the action, the argument in favour of the unities
vanishes into thin air.54
And referring to English and German tragedies in which the rules are not
followed and whose beauty the supporters of the rules cannot deny, he
continues:
I sostenitori stessi delle regole (…) non negano le bellezze ottenute a
scapito delle regole; ma affermano che bisogna rinunziare a quelle
bellezze, giacché per ottenerle bisogna cadere nell’inverosimile.55
The very supporters of the rules (…) do not deny the beauties obtained
through the violation of the rules, but they assert that one must
53
Alessandro Manzoni, Opere, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Milano: Mursia, 1965), p. 40.
Manzoni, The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis, transl. Federica Brunori Deigan
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p. 104.
55
Ibid., p. 43.
55
54
renounce those beauties because, in order to obtain them, one must
fall into inverisimilitude.56
On the contrary, Manzoni believed that the author falls into
inverisimilitude when he follows the rules arbitrarily. In his book
Shakespeare in Italy, Collison-Morley discusses extensively the influence of
Shakespeare on Manzoni. He points out that Manzoni did not follow
Shakespeare in the structure of his own plays, but was certainly indebted to
him for the creation of some of his characters. He also states that, ‘the
numerous soliloquies are obviously modelled on Shakespeare’.57 In her ‘Il
prologo storico di Manzoni’,58 Patrizia Beronesi compares Il Conte di
Carmagnola with Shakespeare’s historical plays and shows that the first
draft of Manzoni’s play was far more similar in structure to that of
Shakespeare’s plays than the final one. From this she concludes that, despite
his assertions in practice Manzoni still followed classical patterns. But this
does not diminish the strength of Manzoni’s defence of Shakespeare; it
clarifies that the acceptance of Shakespeare’s modes was a long process that
went through various phases; in the case of Manzoni, the Italian writer was
convinced of the merits of the English playwright, but was not ready to
follow completely in his steps.
In the Lettre a Monsieur Chauvet sur l’unite de temps et de lieu dans
la tragedie, Manzoni expands on the idea that the observance of the rules
limits the beauty of a dramatic text. He refers to Ermes Visconti’s ‘Dialogo
sulle unità drammatiche’ published in 1819 in the journal Il Conciliatore in
which Visconti (1784-1841) imagines somebody who offers a new version
of Macbeth following the rules.59 This means that the playwright would
choose to show only the final part of Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s
56
Manzoni, The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis, p.107.
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, pp. 113-117.
58
Patrizia Beronesi, ‘Il prologo storico di Manzoni’, in Il teatro del personaggio:
Shakespeare sulla scena italiana dell’800, 20-63.
59
After the publication of this article and of the previous one, ‘Idee elementari sulla poesia
romantica’ published in Il Conciliatore in 1818, Ermes Visconti became one of the most
influential theorists of the Italian Romantic Movement.
56
57
journey from ambition and the consequent deeds to remorse, fear of the
future, hallucinations. To this interlocutor, Visconti would reply:
Vous aurez, à la vérité, choisi le plus beau moment, c’est-à-dire le
dernier période des remords; mais une grande partie des beautés du
sujet aura disparu, parce que la beauté poétique de ce dernier période
dépend beaucoup de ce qu’il arrive après les autres; elle dépend de la
loi de continuité dans les sentimens de l’âme.60
To be honest, you will have chosen the best moment, that is to say the
final time of remorse; but much of the beauty of the subject will have
disappeared because the poetical beauty of this last moment greatly
depends on what happens before; it depends on the law of continuity
in the feelings of our soul.
To show that the observance of the rules makes the action less believable,
he compares Shakespeare’s Othello to Voltaire’s Zaira:
Dans l’une et dans l’autre pièce, c’est un home qui tue la femme qu’il
aime, la croyant infidèle. Shakespeare a pris tout le temps dont il avait
besoin; (…) On voit, dans Othello, le soupçon conçu, combattu,
chassé, revenant sur de nouveaux indices, excité et dirigé, chaque fois
qu’il se manifeste, par l’art abominable d’un ami perfide; on voit ce
soupçon arriver jusqu’à la certitude par
des
degrés
aussi
vraisemblables que terribles. Le tâche de Voltaire était bien plus
difficile. (…) Le poëte ne pouvant, dans un si court intervalle,
rassembler les faux indices qui nourissent lentement les soupçons de
la jalousie, ne pouvant conduire par degrés l’âme d’Orosmane à ce
point de passion (...) a été obligé de faire naître l’erreur de son héros
60
Manzoni, Lettre a` M. C*** sur l’unite’ de temps et de lieu dans la tragedie (1823), ed.
Umberto Colombo (Azzate (VA): Edizioni Otto/Novecento, 1988), p. 90.
57
d’un fait dont l’interprétation fût suffisante pour produire la certitude
de la trahison.61
In both plays, there is a man who kills the woman he loves in the
belief she is unfaithful. Shakespeare took all the time he needed; (…)
In Othello we can see the suspicion conceived, fought against,
dismissed, springing up again through new clues, aroused and
managed, each time, by the abominable skill of a treacherous friend;
we see this suspicion turn into certainty by degrees, as credible as
terrible. Voltaire’s task was much harder. (…) Since the poet, within
such a short interval, could not gather the clues that slowly feed
jealousy, and could not lead the soul of Orosmane to such point of
passion by degrees (…) he was obliged to mislead his hero through a
fact, the interpretation of which, was enough to produce the certainty
of betrayal.
In the Materiali Estetici Manzoni declares that those who think that
drama can only be immoral, say so just because they have not read English
drama. And in his opinion, among the playwrights, Shakespeare is the most
moral because he goes deep into the human soul and showing the human
heart helps the audience or the reader to find the principles of virtue:
Dimostrare che il Bossuet il Nicole e il Rousseau come s’apposero nel
dire immorali le opera teatrali Francesi, così errarono nel credere che
il Teatro sia essenzialmente immorale. Questo loro errore viene in
parte dal non aver conosciuto il Teatro Inglese (...). Toccare questo
punto che la perfezione morale è la perfezione dell’arte, e che perciò
Shakespear [sic] sovrasta agli altri perché è più morale. Più si va in
fondo del cuore, più si trovano i principj [sic] eterni della virtù.62
61 Ibid., pp. 70-72.
62
Manzoni, ‘Materiali Estetici’, in Tutte le opere di Alessandro Manzoni, ed. Alberto
Chiari e Fausto Ghisalberti, 7 vols (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1991), I, p. 14.
58
It can be demonstrated that Bossuet, Nicole and Rousseau, just as they
were mistaken in considering the works of the French theatre
immoral, were mistaken also in believing that the theatre is essentially
immoral. This error comes partly from ignorance of the English
theatre (...). Touch on this point, that moral perfection is the perfection
of art, and that therefore Shakespeare surpasses the others because he
is more moral. The deeper one goes into the heart, the more one finds
the eternal principles of virtue. 63
Even in his masterpiece I Promessi Sposi Manzoni mentions Shakespeare:
in chapter VII he states:
Tra il primo pensiero d’un impresa terribile, e l’esecuzione di essa (ha
detto un barbaro che non era privo d’ingegno) l’intervallo è un sogno,
pieno di fantasmi e di paure.64
As has been remarked by a barbarian not devoid of genius: / Between
the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is /
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.65
The statement is taken from Julius Caesar,66 and the comment in
brackets (in the Italian version) is ironic and is mentioned against Voltaire
who had defined Shakespeare as ‘a barbarian not devoid of genius’.
We can conclude this part affirming that, if Voltaire influenced
eighteenth-century Italian criticism of Shakespeare, Manzoni was the central
and most influential figure of nineteenth-century criticism of the English
playwright and the one through whom the appreciation of Shakespeare in
Italy took a significant step forward. Although his plays still show typical
63
Lombardo, ‘Shakespeare and Italian Criticism’, p. 557.
Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (1827), ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Milano: Mursia, 1984), p. 87.
65
Manzoni, The Betrothed – ‘I Promessi Sposi’: A Tale of XVII century Milan, trans.
Archibald Cloquhoun (London: Dent, 1956), p. 92.
66
Between the acting of a dreadful thing/And the first motion, all the interim is/Like a
phantasma or a hideous dream’.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.1.63-65, ed. David Daniell, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd
series (Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 1998).
59
64
elements of classical drama, it is thanks to his contribution in the field of
criticism that Shakespeare became a central figure of study. As a proof of
this, we see that it is in this period that the work of translation began in
earnest. Two names deserve to be mentioned: Carlo Rusconi and Giulio
Carcano, who started to translate Shakespeare in 1839 and, little by little,
managed to translate his complete oeuvre, the first in prose, the second in
verse, a task that took them many years.
Criticism on Shakespeare took a big step forward with the work of
Francesco De Sanctis (1817-1883), the most influential critic of the
nineteenth century in Italy. His appreciation of Shakespeare was based on
the assumption that a work of art should not be judged from the outside
comparing it with supposed objective rules (classical rules), but from the
inside tracing and revealing the laws that are peculiar to that work only. He
saw the work of art as an individual organism, the content of which is
contained in its appropriate form which, therefore, does not exist a priori.
The task of the critic is to go through the same process that led the author to
the creation of his work and establish whether he was able to blend content
and form harmoniously.
De Sanctis speaks widely about Shakespeare in his Teoria e storia
della letteratura, and then continuously refers to him in the Saggi Critici
and in Storia della letteratura italiana. In the first-mentioned text, which is
a record of the lessons he offered in Naples between 1839 and 1848, De
Sanctis makes a long introduction to Shakespeare’s work and, after that, he
analyses a few of the plays by the English playwright where we find some
insights that constituted a novelty in the history of Italian Shakespearian
criticism even though he read Shakespeare only in translations and,
therefore, he could not contribute to the understanding and appreciation of
the language. According to De Sanctis the great poet is able to blend the
‘real’ with the ‘ideal’. He agreed with Manzoni on the fact that Shakespeare
used the ‘real’ to create his stories and characters but he went further: he
distinguished between those poets and philosophers who, very patiently,
record and classify phenomena, and those who are not able to live in the real
world and withdraw themselves into the realm of ideas:
60
A me pare che sia dei poeti come dei filosofi, alcuni dei quali hanno
diligente pazienza nel registrare e classificare i fenomeni, ed altri si
levano ad altissime astrazioni, lasciando il mondo esterno e la realtà;
ma solo pochissimi sono quelli che sanno essere del pari altamente
speculativi e pratici e positivi. (...) Massimo poeta è colui che riunisce
le due forze: come Shakespeare, come Dante.67
I tend to believe that some poets, as well as some philosophers, can
patiently record and classify phenomena, while others elevate
themeselves to very high abstractions, leaving the external world and
reality behind; but very few can be highly speculative and practical
and positive at the same time (…) The master poet is who combines
the two forces: like Shakespeare, like Dante.
Therefore life, which to many seems to be contradictory, to De Sanctis is
absolutely harmonious because behind the real we can always find the soul,
the ideal:
Considerare lo Shakespeare solo per le particolarità del reale che egli
presenta, e dimenticare l’anima ch’egli fa vibrare sotto di esse, vale
non intenderlo.68
Praising Shakespeare only for the peculiarities of the real that he
presents and forgetting the soul which vibrates underneath, means
misunderstanding him.
He widens the idea of the representation of reality in his analysis of
The Tempest. Here he contradicts those – Schlegel in particular – who did
not see the real in this play. But he points out that we should distinguish
between ‘reality’ and ‘truth’: the story told in The Tempest is not real, but it
represents the truth:
67
Francesco De Sanctis, Teoria e storia della letteratura: lezioni tenute a Napoli dal 1839
al 1848, ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari: Laterza, 1926), pp. 205-206.
68
Ibid., p. 205.
61
Nessuna realtà storica ci porge l’idea di uomini piccini meno di un
pollice, o di un viaggio nella luna; eppure leggiamo con diletto
creazioni come queste in Swift e in Ariosto. Reali o immaginate, pur
che siano rappresentate con verità e noi sentiamo la verità che in esse
si asconde, non cerchiamo altro in arte.69
No historical reality offers the idea of tiny men, less than an inch tall,
or of a journey to the moon; still, we read with pleasure creations like
these in Swift and in Ariosto; real or imagined what matters is that
they are represented with truth and we feel the truth that hides behind;
this is all that we expect in art.
The essay on Romeo and Juliet is the most complete and meticulous.
In it De Sanctis introduces an important idea which had only been suggested
before outside Italy, by Mme de Stael for example: the idea of the modern
hero shown in Shakespeare’s plays as opposed to the ancient hero:
Si è detto da taluni che questa tragedia dipende dal caso; (...) Ma il
caso è caso pel volgo; pei poeti è il misterioso legame delle umane
azioni, che segue a un primo passo errato e pericoloso. Pensate come
son fatti Giulietta e Romeo, alla loro passione, alla loro inesperienza,
alle loro illusioni; come potete meravigliarvi che il corso degli umani
avvenimenti li travolga e li schiacci?70
Some have suggested that this tragedy depends on fate; (…) But fate
is for the common people; for the poets it is the mysterious thread of
human actions that follows a first wrong and dangerous step. Think of
what Juliet and Romeo are like, of their passion, their inexperience,
their illusions; how can you wonder that the course of human events
overwhelms them?
69
70
Ibid., p. 212.
Ibid., p. 216.
62
As Lombardo highlights, this passage is important because it indicates
‘how De Sanctis saw clearly the complete “modern” nature of
Shakespeare’s art, and how he could recognize it even in a play where it was
not easy to avoid the danger of attributing the catastrophe to an external
force’.71 The essay is long, interesting, and beautiful: in the first part, De
Sanctis focuses on Romeo and Juliet’s youthful love, he summarises the plot
of the play, and mentions some beautiful, poetic lines. In the second, he
praises Shakespeare for writing plays that show reality in its entirety. All
agreed by that time that bringing together tragic and comic, for example,
was necessary to Shakespeare to depict life as it really is, but De Sanctis
took this point even further affirming that from the encounter of the two
worlds poetry originates. The way he explains it is striking:
E quanta poesia nasce dall’incontro dei due mondi! Voi siete
angosciati e travagliati, e un amico, ignaro, viene a discorrere con voi,
lieto e barzellettando. Voi avete la morte nel cuore, e per la via
incontrate gente che se ne va serena, allegra, ridente. In questo
contrasto, si sente più forte la poesia del dolore.72
And how much poetry originates from the encounter of these two
worlds! You are distressed and tormented and a friend, unaware,
comes to talk with you, happily and jokingly. You have death in your
heart and on the street you meet serene, happy, smiling people. The
poetry of pain is felt more strongly in this contrast.
The presence of secondary characters contributes to give a full view
of reality, according to De Sanctis. They are never superficial, they have
their individuality, a reason for being there that, to a great or small extent,
serves the purpose of the play. De Sanctis opposes the unity of character to
the unity of time and place, the former being – in his opinion – much more
important than the latter. He also makes it clear that unity of character
71
72
Lombardo, Shakespeare and Italian Criticism, p. 564.
Ibid., p. 222.
63
means showing a complex, multi-faceted character: even a hero has got the
weaknesses of a man.
As to the historical dramas, De Sanctis asks how history can be
represented poetically, a question that is part of a wider one: how reality can
be represented poetically. It is not necessary to spend hours in a library to
give an account of history, what is important is to be able to interpret times
and peoples, to guess the character of times and peoples, which is what
Shakespeare did. We see here that the discussion on single characters has
widened to a population.
De Sanctis never abandoned reflection upon Shakespeare. His name is
mentioned in essays concerning other authors and he often judged these in
the light of Shakespeare’s work. Little by little the study of Shakespeare’s
plays was becoming more detailed. De Sanctis contributed significantly to
the development of Italian Shakespearian criticism suggesting the idea of a
Shakespeare who showed the ‘ideal’ in the ‘real’ and focusing on the
‘modern’ nature of his characters and of his plays. After him, no real
innovation was to be seen until 1920 when Benedetto Croce published his
essay Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille. But despite this, Shakespeare
was making his way into the Italian peninsula through other channels.
1.2 Verdi’s Macbeth: a Milestone in the Diffusion and
Appreciation of Shakespeare’s Plays in Italy
Operas based on Shakespeare’s plays began to appear in various
European countries at the end of the eighteenth century.73 As far as Italy is
concerned, Shakespeare reached the Italian theatre by way of the opera
house. According to Winton Dean the best operas were composed by
Italians:
73
For a clear analysis of Shakespeare operas in a European context see Winton Dean,
‘Shakespeare in the Opera House’, in Shakespeare Then Till Now, ed. Allardyce Nicoll,
Shakespeare Survey 18 (1965), 75-93.
64
German opera composers have tended to make Shakespeare
sententious or sentimental, the French have often made him just
sentimental, the English have made him dull, while the Italians have
turned him into roaring melodrama. (...) The Italian method, when
refined, has produced the most satisfactory results.74
As would happen in prose theatre, in opera too the plays were adapted
to the spirit and taste of the age and, most of all, to the type of opera which
was fashionable at the time of the composition. Therefore, the resemblance
of the opera in terms of plot and characterization was minimal and, till the
mid-nineteenth century, there seemed to be very little respect for the
original creation. Operas did not usually originate from the text by
Shakespeare, but from adaptations like those of the already-mentioned
Ducis. Until the end of the nineteenth century, there was also little concern
for the music: what mattered was just the spectacle. In the course of the
nineteenth century the art of opera began to develop, but the understanding
of Shakespeare was still far to come.
Shakespeare operas began to appear all over Europe in the last thirty
years of the eighteenth century, the first of which were Romeo and Juliet,
The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Tempest. Then, as a consequence of
the re-evaluation of Shakespeare during the Romantic Age, a high number
of operas were composed. Among these we can mention Rossini’s Otello
which dates back to 1816 and was the first opera founded on a play by
Shakespeare that was regarded as a masterpiece. Nevertheless, the libretto
still very much differed from the original text with the exception of the last
act where the murder scene was preserved. This was something new at a
time when tragic endings were usually converted into happy endings. What
is striking is that – according to Winton Dean – in this act Rossini reached a
much higher level from a musical point of view:
74 Dean, ‘Shakespeare in the Opera House’, p.76.
65
Something of Shakespeare’s dramatic truth seems to have penetrated
to Rossini. Here, perhaps for the first time, we can detect the influence
of Shakespeare on a great composer.75
On the whole, however, Rossini’s main concern was not fidelity to the
text. In this respect, the first opera writer who composed works that were
meant to be really Shakespearian was Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). Verdi
profoundly admired Shakespeare and tried to gain a deep understanding of
his texts and, through his music, to preserve the spirit, plot and
characterization. This is how he replied to the accusation of not knowing
Shakespeare made of him by the French press after he presented a renewed
version of his Macbeth in Paris in 1865:76
Può darsi che io non abbia reso bene il Macbet [sic], ma che io non
conosco, che non capisco e che non sento Shacpeare [sic], no, per Dio,
no. È un poeta di mia predilezione, che ho avuto fra le mani dalla mia
prima gioventù, e che leggo e rileggo continuamente.77
I may not have rendered Macbeth well, but that I do not know, do not
understand and feel Shakespeare, no, by heavens, no! He is one of my
very special poets, and I have had him in my hand from my earliest
youth and I read and re-read him continually.
In 1846 Verdi was commissioned by impresario Alessandro Lanari
to compose a new opera to present in the Lent season of 1847 in the theatre
in Via della Pergola in Florence. Lanari asked him to find something in the
‘genere fantastico’.78 There were three plays that he considered: Die
Ahnfrau by the German dramatist Franz Grillparzer, Die Räuber by Schiller,
and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The choice depended on the singers that would
75
Ibid., p. 80.
The first version was premièred on March 14, 1847 in Florence.
77
Carteggi Verdiani, ed. Alessandro Luzio, 4 vols (Roma: Accademia Nazionale dei
Lincei, 1947), IV, p. 159.
78
Giorgio Melchiori, ‘Macbeth: Shakespeare to Verdi’, in Macbeth – Giuseppe Verdi,
Opera Guide Series, ed. John Nicholas (publ. in association with English National Opera,
1990), 7-12 (p. 9).
66
76
be available. For Macbeth, which he read in Rusconi’s prose translation and
on which the choice fell, he had already in mind the singer for the role of
Macbeth: the baritone Felice Varesi, though Lanari had another baritone –
Gaetano Ferri – under contract. For Lady Macbeth, he thought of Sofia
Loewe but, since she was not available, the part was assigned to Marianna
Barbieri-Nini. Up to that moment Verdi had written operas in the Rossini
tradition, that is operas that would primarily show the singers’ voices, while
scarcely considering the dramatic effect. In his article ‘The Young Verdi
and Shakespeare’, David Kimbell maintains that what Verdi now wished to
do was:
not to transform a dramatic and literary masterpiece into a typical
Italian opera, but to transform Italian opera into a medium flexible and
eloquent enough to be a vehicle for such characters and such passions
as those in a literary masterpiece like Macbeth.79
Therefore the singers should have certain characteristics, and their
voices should be appropriate to a particular dramatic action or to a particular
emotion; each voice should be intense, multi-timbric, while Verdi was much
less concerned with its beauty. In August 1846, while he was still reflecting
upon the play he would choose, he wrote to Alessandro Lanari about the
baritone Varesi:
Varesi è il solo artista attuale in Italia che possa fare la parte che
medito, e per il suo genere di canto e per il suo sentire, ed anche per la
stessa sua figura (…) senza nulla togliere al merito di Ferri che ha più
bella figura, più bella voce, e se vuoi anche migliore cantante, non mi
potrebbe certamente fare in quella parte l’effetto che mi farebbe
Varesi. 80
79
David R. B. Kimbell, ‘The Young Verdi and Shakespeare’, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association, 101, (1974-1975), 59-73(p. 64).
80
I Copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Gaetano Cesari e Alessandro Luzio (Milano: Fronti,
1913), pp. 25-26.
67
(Lettera XXIX al Sig. Alessandro Lanari – Milano, 19 agosto 1846)
Varesi is the only contemporary artist in Italy who can play the role I
have in mind for his singing mode, his temperament and also for his
figure. (…) Ferri has a better figure, more beautiful voice and he is
also a better singer but, in that role, he would not have the same
impact as Varesi.
As for Lady Macbeth, when the part was given to Eugenia Tadolini
for a production in Naples, he wrote to the Neapolitan librettist Cammarano:
Ma nell’interesse dell’esecuzione, penso sia necessario osservare che
essa possiede qualità troppo grandi per questa parte. Può sembrare una
assurdità. La Tadolini ha bella voce e bella presenza ed io vorrei una
Lady brutta e cattiva. La Tadolini canta in modo perfetto, ed io vorrei
che Lady Macbeth non cantasse affatto. La Tadolini ha una voce
meravigliosa, limpida e potente; e la voce di Lady Macbeth dev’essere
quella di un demonio! 81
(Lettera LXVII – Parigi, 23 Novembre 1848)
But, in the interest of the performance, I think it necessary to observe
that she has too great qualitites for this part. It may seem absurd.
Tadolini has a beautiful voice and a beautiful figure and I would like
an ugly and wicked Lady. Tadolini sings perfectly and I would like
Lady Macbeth not to sing at all. Tadolini has a wonderful voice, clear
and powerful; and Lady Macbeth’s voice must be that of a demon!
To Marianna-Barbieri Nini he wrote:
81
Ibid., pp. 61-62.
68
As for the letter, it’s impossible to cut it out, because it is fundamental
to the drama (...); the sleepwalking scene, is for dramatic effect, one of
the most sublime theatrical creations.82
This is what Marianna Barbieri-Nini said about the rehearsals directed by
Verdi:
La scena del sonnambulismo assorbì tre mesi di studio. E per tre mesi,
mattina e sera, cercai di imitare quelli che parlano dormendo, che
articolano parole, come mi diceva il Maestro senza quasi muovere le
labbra, lasciando immobile le altre parti del corpo, compresi gli
occhi!83
The sleepwalking scene took me three months of study. And for three
months, morning and evening, I tried to imitate those who speak while
sleeping, who articulate words, as the Maestro told me hardly moving
his lips, keeping the other parts of the body motionless and eyes fixed!
To Varesi, Verdi wrote:
I shall never cease recommending you to study closely the dramatic
situation and the words: the music comes of itself. In short I would
rather you served the poet better than the composer.84
From these statements we understand that Verdi wanted his singers to
acquire a dramatic technique, and that this was at least as important as the
beauty and perfection of the singing. It is not surprising that Verdi took
active part not only in the choice of the singers, but also in the wording of
82
Frank Walker, ‘Verdi’s Ideas on the Production of his Shakespeare operas’, Proceedings
of the Royal Musical Association, 76th Sess., (1949-1950), 11-21 (p. 15). The Italian version
of Verdi’s letters to Barbieri-Nini is published in the Italian periodical Musica, (November
23rd, 1913).
83
Leonardo Bragaglia, Verdi e i suoi interpreti (1839-1978) (Roma: Bulzoni Editore,
1979), p. 330.
84
Walker, ‘Verdi’s Ideas on the Production of his Shakespeare operas’, p. 15. The Italian
version of Verdi’s letters to Varesi is published in the Italian periodical Nuova Antologia,
(December 16th, 1932).
69
the libretto. As I pointed out before he had to rely on Rusconi’s translation
for his Macbeth, but nonetheless he made clear requests to librettist
Francesco Maria Piave. Therefore, the dialogue between the two was
intense. On the whole Verdi was not satisfied with Piave’s libretto (in fact
he asked Andrea Maffei for help for the last two acts). He often reproached
him, and he insisted that he should use few words: ‘Always bear in mind to
use few words, few words, few, few but significant’. (September 22, 1846).
Melchiori suggests that Verdi’s request for ‘few but significant words’ was
an attempt to be faithful to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, his shortest tragedy.85
‘The power of imagery, the recurrent figures of antithesis and the play of
metaphors (…) add a visionary dimension to the words’ in the play. Verdi’s
aim was that of replacing words with such ‘visionary dimension’ recreated
through music.86
A fundamental role is played by the chorus. The three witches are
replaced by a group, as well as Banquo’s murderers. And a significant
interpolation is the chorus of the Scottish refugees at the beginning of act 4,
which clearly hints at the Italian history of the period, and had a strong
impact on the audience.87 The presence of the chorus augmented the
element of spectacle in the opera, and placed it within the context of the
nineteenth-century staging of the play. Although there was still no tradition
of staging Shakespeare in Italy and the first Macbeth appeared in 1949,
Verdi was certainly aware of the spectacular treatement that characterized
the theatre of his time. Therefore, his singing and dancing witches were part
of a well-established staging tradition, in which ‘supernaturalism became
spectacle’.88 Another important characteristic of his Macbeth was the use of
contrasts. Daniela Goldin speaks of the contrasti, or the ‘oppositions so
characteristic of Verdian dramaturgy. Macbeth versus Banquo, Macbeth
versus Lady Macbeth; but also Banquo in Act One versus Banquo in Act
85
In the next chapters I will explore the idea of ‘authenticity’ extensively.
Melchiori, ‘Macbeth: Shakespeare to Verdi’, p. 9.
87
In 1847 Italy was still a divided country and, in the north, it was under the Austrian rule.
Organized revolts to eliminate Austrian control took place in 1848.
88
Michael R. Booth, ‘Macbeth and the Nineteenth-Century Theatre’, in Macbeth –
Giuseppe Verdi, Opera Guide Series, p. 37.
70
86
Two, Lady Macbeth in Act One versus Lady Macbeth in Act Four’. 89 The
composer was less interested in the characters’ psychology than in making
them a kind of opposing situations, which he used in order to create striking
and violent musical contrasts. As I will illustrate in the next chapter this
feature would influence the first performances of Shakespeare’s plays in the
country. The actors of the mid-nineteenth century used contrasts
extensively, creating opposing emotions and situations, and it is very likely
that they knew about the same use in Verdi’s Macbeth. Theatre, in fact, was
in competition with opera, which was more popular and better financed at
that time. So, the actors had to find ways to be as appealing to the audience
as opera was.
Verdi’s Macbeth was performed on March 14, 1847 in Florence. A
revised version was presented in Paris on 21 April 1865 which is the one on
which all the successive stagings of the opera were based. As to the aim of
this chapter – explaining how Shakespeare’s plays were introduced and
received in Italy – the first version is relevant because, after the first
performances of 1847, the play – in this opera version – literally invaded the
country. After Macbeth Verdi also composed Otello (premièred in Milan in
1887) and Falstaff (premièred in Milan in 1893). In both cases Arrigo Boito
was the librettist. These two compositions are regarded by experts as much
more mature works than Macbeth; but in this thesis I do not analyse Verdi’s
operas from the musical point of view. What interested me was to clarify the
importance of Verdi for the diffusion and understanding of Shakespeare in
Italy, and to point out how his opera version paved the way for new
transformations and adaptations made by the first actors who played
Shakespearian characters on the Italian stage.
**********
89
Quoted in Melchiori, ‘Macbeth: Shakespeare to Verdi’, p. 10.
71
In order to spread the knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare’s
plays in Italy, a long period of induction and acquaintance with the foreign
genius was needed. Men like Baretti, Manzoni, Verdi, and the others, whose
work I have investigated in this chapter, created the conditions to make the
English playwright available to the Italian people, and their reactions to his
work, whether in scholarship, criticism, translation or opera, ushered in a
slow process of reception of his plays in the country.
There is one field that is missing in this first chapter’s survey, the
field of theatre practice. After the scholars, the critics, the writers and the
composer, it was the presence in Italy of three great actors, who took up the
English playwright and performed his plays all over the country, that
marked a significant phase in that long process of acceptance that started
with the first mention of his name in 1667. The performances of Ernesto
Rossi, Tommaso Salvini, and Adelaide Ristori in Italy, but also in Europe,
and in Northern and Southern America, will constitute the bulk of chapter 2
of my journey. As I have written in the introduction, in chapter 2 I will also
start my discussion of different ways to stage Shakespeare’s plays, and I
will elucidate what is meant by ‘actor’s theatre’, and how the protagonists of
the actor’s theatre approached Shakespeare’s texts, and gave them theatrical
form.
72
2. Shakespeare in the Actor’s Theatre (mid-19th
century-1925)
Three elements made a fundamental contribution to the knowledge
and diffusion of Shakespeare’s plays in Italy in the mid-nineteenth century.
Two have already been mentioned: Manzoni’s defence of the playwright
and Verdi’s operas. The third was the presence in Italy of three great actors
who took up Shakespeare and performed his plays not only in their country
but also in Europe, and in Northern and Southern America. They were:
Adelaide Ristori (1822-1906), Ernesto Rossi (1827-1896) and Tommaso
Salvini (1829-1916).
Today they are known as ‘la triade’ (‘the triad’) and they are
remembered as the ‘Great Actors’ with capital letters. Yet they are not the
only ones who became very popular in the 1800s. In fact, the century was
characterized by the presence of a number of extraordinary actors in various
European countries, a number that rises if we focus on the period that
extends from mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth.
Among the best known, besides Rossi, Salvini and Ristori, there were:
Gustavo Modena, Mademoiselle Rachel, Antonio Petito, Sarah Bernhardt,
Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Ermete Zacconi, Giovanni Grasso, Angelo
Musco, and Eleonora Duse. Out of thirteen, nine are Italian! In her book
Racconti del Grande Attore: tra la Rachel e la Duse, Mirella Schino affirms
that Italy ‘in un certo senso è stata la patria del Grande Attore’ (‘was in a
certain sense the homeland of the Great Actor’). 1
It is on the actors that I will focus my attention in this chapter, and
on their performances of Shakespeare’s plays. In the first part of the chapter
I will discuss the revolution in acting that was brought about by Gustavo
Modena, that later resulted in the memorable performances of the triad, and
1
Mirella Schino, Racconti del Grande Attore: tra la Rachel e la Duse (Città di Castello
[Pg]: Edimond, 2004), p. 7.
73
that, although indirectly, also influenced the art of Duse at the turn of the
century. In the following chapters it will be clear that Modena’s teachings
were fundamental to the further evolution of acting in Italy in the twentieth
century, in a story that, despite the emergence of extremely talented
directors in the middle of the century, does not seem to abandon the
preference for a direct relationship between the actor and the audience. In
the second part of the chapter I will look at Rossi’s, Salvini’s, and Ristori’s
interpretations of Shakespeare’s characters, and I will discuss how
Shakespeare’s plays were staged in what is now known as the actor’s
theatre. Finally I will move to other Shakespearian performances by the
following generation of actors, the so-called mattatori, Ermete Novelli and
Zacconi and, most important of all, Duse.2 Her work will allow me to
illustrate how, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the first signs of a
new revolution, the shift from the actor’s to the ‘director’s theatre’, made
their appearance. In this chapter I also want to compare the stagings of
Shakespeare’s plays by the Italian actors with those by British actormanagers, like Charles Macready and Henry Irving, in the same period, and
compare Italian acting of Shakespeare, labelled by Marvin Carlson as ‘The
Italian Style’,3 with English acting.
**********
2.1 A Forerunner and the Great Actors
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the first attempts to
create resident theatre companies to replace touring companies were made
2
For mattatori see footnote 10 at page 20. Further on in the section I will explain what
distinguished the theatre of the Great Actors from the theatre of the mattatori.
3 Marvin Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians: Performances by Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi
in England and America , p. 175.
74
in Italy. Touring companies had taken their productions all around Europe
from the mid-sixteenth century but, in the course of the eighteenth, they
gradually disappeared in most of Europe. Therefore, the Italian delay was an
exception. It was only in 1806 during the Napoleonic domination, that,
following the example of the French Comédie Française, 4 the Compagnia
Reale Italiana (Italian Royal Company) was founded and remained in
existence until 1827. Meanwhile, in 1821, the Compagnia Reale Sarda
(Sardinian Royal Company) was set up on the order of Vittorio Emanuele I,
King of Sardinia. It worked for 34 years and was dismissed in 1855 when
Parliament abolished the subsidy considering it superfluous expenses.5
Other attempts followed, but none lasted long. Some councils (local
authorities) gave grants, but the little money they disposed of was usually
assigned to opera which, in Italy, was much more prestigious than nonmusical theatre. The consequence of this situation was that, at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, companies were still forced to tour around the
country with some inevitable negative consequences: the same scenery was
used for different plays, as it was impossible to bring along threedimensional props, in place of which painted cloths were used. Lights were
fixed. Every actor had his or her costumes that did not necessarily match
with the other actors’. There was no time for rehearsal, so actors had to play
stock-roles, a long-standing tradition of the Italian theatre. The repertory
was rather commercial as tickets were the only form of income and the
public – often composed of poorly literate or illiterate people – wanted
popular pieces. Adding to the audience’s unrefined taste, there was also the
mistrust of authors towards actors and vice versa. Authors were not willing
to write for theatre as, according to Meldolesi and Taviani, literature ‘non
era più disposta a compromettersi con il sudore, con il disordine, con le
manomissioni del teatro’ (‘was no longer disposed to compromise itself
4 The Comédie Française, set up in 1680, was the first European theatre with a fixed
location, which received state subsidies.
5 These attempts failed because the two companies had not been set up for a genuine belief
in their cultural function, but with the sole aim to show an understanding – which turned
out to be only apparent – of the profound social changes aroused by the French Revolution.
75
with the sweat, with the disorder, with the manipulations of theatre’).6 As
for the actors, they accused authors of giving them plays that were not
appealing for the public and that, probably more truly, did not allow them to
increase their popularity. It is difficult to establish who was right and who
was wrong. Perhaps there was some truth on both sides. What is interesting
is Meldolesi and Taviani’s idea that the authors’ neglect of theatre had some
positive consequences, as the actors had to do their best and find new ways
to offer appealing productions despite the poor repertoire. But I will develop
this point in my discussion of the work of the triad on Shakespeare’s plays.
It is in this context that Modena brought about his revolution of
theatre. Modena was born in 1803 in Venice. He was the son of two actors
but, following his father’s wishes, he studied Law at university. Yet,
because of his love of theatre, he abandoned that career and joined the
theatre company of Salvatore Fabbrichesi. He made his debut in Venice in
1824, where he was immediately noticed for the natural quality and
spontaneity of his acting, which sharply contrasted with the conventionalism
and declamatory style typical of eighteenth-century acting. After being in
exile from 1832 to 1839 because of his republican ideals and his
participation in the revolutionary movements of those years, he returned to
Italy and set up a company of young actors, whom he wanted to shape
according to his ideas. Clearly his journeys around Europe had widened his
mind, and allowed him to compare Italian theatre with foreign theatre. The
‘compagnia dei giovani’ (‘company of the young’) was run by Modena from
1843 to 1845. He left the company after only two years because he was a
strong opponent of the institutionalization of theatre, but his mark was to
last long. According to Meldolesi and Taviani, Modena did not want to
create an alternative theatre, but to exploit the potential of Italian theatre. 7 In
order to do this, much had to change, primarily acting, which needed to be
improved. Modena did not want to shape his pupils, but help them find the
6
Claudio Medolesi and Ferdinando Taviani, Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Ottocento
(Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1991), p. 223.
7
Ibid., p. 245.
76
right way to develop their natural talent. Central for him was work on the
character, with whom the actor should identify himself through long hours
of study of the character’s behaviour and psyche. Distancing himself from
the declamatory style of eighteenth-century acting on the one hand, and
from the habit of playing stock characters on the other, Modena asked his
pupils to create real characters, in whose existence the audience would
believe. Although the revolution in acting was the most important aspect of
his model of theatre, he also paid great attention to the use of lights, to the
setting, and to costumes that were chosen according to the play that he
wanted to stage. In moving the attention from the individual to the
ensemble, he can be regarded as a forerunner of the director, a figure that, in
Italy, would only be accepted from the first decades of the twentieth
century. Again we can speak of an Italian delay if we have a look at other
European countries, where there had already been avant-garde mises-enscène before the last decades of the nineteenth century. Namely, at the
above-mentioned Parisian Comédie-Française, choices were made already
at the beginning of the century that paved the way for the modern idea of a
director’s theatre. The repertoire was chosen by the main societaires, seven
or eight members of the company (the figure of the actor-manager did not
exist). Rehearsals lasted at least three weeks and, if the play to be staged
was by a contemporary author, they were conducted by him personally. It is
not mistaken to affirm that, in most cases, the first directors were the
playwrights, a practice that reached back to Shakespeare’s own time. Of
course the author’s main concern was that the actors respected his text, so
the final product to be offered to the audience would unfold during
rehearsals and, as a consequence, the printed text differed markedly from
the first version.8 As for Germany, in the nineteenth century, there were
already many resident companies in various theatres: in Weimar, Johann
Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) directed the Court Theatre from 1791 to
8
Elena Randi, ‘Allestimenti d’avanguardia francesi ante 1870’, in Il teatro di regia: genesi
ed evoluzione (1870-1950), ed. Umberto Artioli, 22-26.
77
1817.9 In his theatre everything depended on him: the repertoire, the choice
of actors and their acting which he required to be ‘choral’. Even with
Goethe we find a writer who became a director, an ‘Ur-regisseur’, who
wished to unify harmonically the various parts of the mise-en-scène.10
This harmony, besides the improvement of acting, was what Modena
tried to achieve in his school and with his stagings. He was also concerned
with choices regarding the repertoire. On the one hand he tried to promote a
new national dramaturgy, on the other, he opened himself to the inclusion of
European plays, especially those coming from the most developed countries,
in the belief that in those plays he could find the right situations and the
right characters for his idea of a democratic and popular theatre.
Shakespeare’s plays were among Modena’s choices. Unfortunately,
his first attempt was unsuccessful. The play he chose was Otello, which he
presented at Teatro Re in Milan in 1842. The play was not at all understood
by the audience who, being accustomed to comedy or to tragedy but not to
any contamination of the two, whistled just after the opening scene – when
Roderigo started to shout for Brabantio and Brabantio appeared half asleep
and with disordered clothes –, as they considered it comic.11 The
performance was interrupted – according to Modena at the end of act 1,
scene 1, according to more recent studies not long before the end – and
Modena was so discouraged that he did not make any further attempts.
Certainly, offering a play by Shakespeare in a country where the English
playwright was practically unknown to the public, and where theatre was
still very much influenced by classical rules, was a very daring enterprise.
A few years later another actor decided to try again, Alemanno
Morelli. Morelli knew Modena well, and shared his interest in Shakespeare.
Despite Modena’s failure he presented Amleto and Macbeth in Milan and in
other cities in the early 1850s. His success was moderate, but this was a sign
9
Mara Fazio, Regie teatrali: dalle origini a Brecht (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006), pp. 8-11;
Elena Randi, ‘Il caso della Germania e dell’Inghilterra’, in Il teatro di regia, 26-30.
10
Also dealing with the mise-en-scène before the advent of the directors’ theatre: Alonge, Il
Teatro dei registi: scopritori di enigma e poeti della scena, pp. 16-36.
11
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 18.
78
that, little by little, the Italian audience was starting to accept the English
playwright.12 But it was only with the triad that Shakespeare’s plays finally
made their way into the hearts of the Italians and, although the appreciaton
of the English playwright varied at times, from this moment on they would
never leave the Italian stage.
Rossi and Salvini were among Modena’s pupils. Rossi was the first
actor who was immensely successful with a play by Shakespeare. He
examined the plays in detail and in the original as he could speak English,
and also wrote essays about Shakespeare. His command of the English
language allowed him to judge translations; he was satisfied with Rusconi’s
translation of Hamlet but not of Othello. Therefore he asked Carcano for a
new verse translation, and he went even further: he made his own translation
of Julius Caesar. He travelled to Paris and to England, saw English
performances and, in 1856, he finally presented his Otello in Milan’s Teatro
Re, the venue of Modena’s fiasco. He gained so much success that this
Otello was followed by Amleto presented two weeks later in the same
theatre and, after two years, by Macbeth played in Venice, and Re Lear
played in Turin. Carlson reports Rossi’s memoirs, in which the actor noted
that, by the time he played Othello, the audience were more accustomed to
Shakespeare’s style, and were ready to accept it, although they could not
understand everything.13 Rossi was also Coriolanus, Shylock, Romeo,
Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Richard III. In 1856 Salvini too played the role
of Othello.
Salvini was an outstanding actor who met huge success.14 Although Othello
was considered his greatest part, he was also Hamlet, King Lear and
Macbeth. The third ‘member’ of the triad was Ristori, who had not been
Modena’s pupil, but was indirectly influenced by him. Ristori’s only
Shakespearian role was Lady Macbeth, but one role was enough for her to
12
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy, p. 154; Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p.
19.
13
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 21.
14
Collison-Morley, Shakespeare in Italy p. 158.
79
be acclaimed in Italy and outside the peninsula.15 Taking a closer look at
how these first actors performed Shakespeare’s characters we will clearly
trace the strong influence of Modena’s ideas on acting. Konstantin
Stanislavski (1863-1938), the Russian-Soviet actor-director-teacher, creator
of the most influential ‘system’ of acting in the Western world and founder,
in 1897, of the Moscow Art Theatre, for example, was impressed by
Salvini’s long preparation before each performance to find the right emotion
for the character he was going to play.
Certainly, their style differed from the Anglo-American though these
actors had seen English or American companies perform Shakespeare. Rossi
and Ristori were in Paris in 1856 where they saw Wallack’s troupe and, (as I
said before), Rossi spent some time in London where he made friends with
Charles Kean and studied his versions of Hamlet and Othello.16 One of the
features that Carlson underlines of the Italian Style was the spontaneity and
individuality of the acting. In the following section I will deal with the
English and American tours of these Italian actors, but I will quote here a
long article published on 7 August 1881 in the New York Tribune which
gives an extensive account of Rossi’s acting style and of Modena’s
influence on him, Salvini and Ristori. Referring to Rossi the critic wrote:
Under the teachings of Modena, who never shackled his pupils with
tradition, and never exacted even the copying of himself, he had been
trained to be natural in his own way, and this was a development in
the spontaneous direction of his mind. All the pupils of Modena, who
have been heard of at all, have exemplified the master’s wisdom in
15
For an analysis of Ristori as Lady Macbeth see: Laura Caretti, ‘La regia di Lady
Macbeth’, in Il teatro del personaggio, ed. Laura Caretti, 147-180; also ‘Shakespeare and
Shakespeare’, in Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento, 39-51.
16
The Wallacks were one of the three great theatrical families of America, the others being
the Booths and the Jeffersons. James W. Wallack Sr. was born in London in 1794 and died
in New York in 1864. His acting company was continued by his son Lester. In 1856 the
troupe were presenting several Shakespearian plays in Paris at the Salle Ventadour.
80
one notable way – they have kept their distinct individuality and
advanced in pathways of their own.17
As Marvin Carlson explains, this spontaneity did not seem to belong
either to the British acting style of that period or to the American, which
was deeply influenced by the former. Carlson hints at the ‘sameness in the
movements of most Shakespearian actors in England and in America’ 18 and
at their declamation of the text that ‘too had a certain predictability, even
though it was less regular than that of the French stage’.19 In other words,
while the English and American actors followed a kind of fixed structure,
the Italians were more flexible and expressed themselves in a more
emotional style.
The article in the New York Tribune continues:
His [Rossi] salient peculiarity as an actor is the passionate reality of
his personations – a reality which comprehends the rare and delicate
emotions of the soul not less than the manifestations of physical
excitement. Thus, he is as intense and vital in conveying the spirit of
one of Hamlet’s dream-burdened soliloquies as in depicting the fury
of Romeo’s assault on the slayer of Mercutio (...) Those who have
seen him act testify that his intuition, not only as to this character
[Hamlet], but as to every part that he plays, is extraordinarily subtile
[sic], and that his capacity for embodiment is wonderful.20
And this is how Modena had expressed his philosophy of the creation of a
character and of the character’s consistency:
17
New York Tribune, 7 August 1881.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1881-08-07/ed-1/seg-5/, Chronicling
America: Historic American Newspapers,(can be accessed at the British Library – London)
[accessed 14 November 2012]. The article gives a detailed account of Rossi’s career, of the
important role he played in the introduction of Shakespeare’s plays in Italy, of his opinion
of existing translation, and of his acting style.
18
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 181.
19
Ibid.
20
New York Tribune, 7 August 1881.
81
Non conosco che una legge: - il mio personaggio –: Quando è
contegnoso, quando è altiero, devo esserlo anch’io; quando è umile,
ed io umile; quando vaneggia, ed io matto; se l’ira lo vince ed io servo
dell’ira, della passione, meno che uomo ( ... ). Chi ha inchiodata e
ribadita nelle teste italiane codesta falsa massima del tipo unico di
recitazione tragica (...).21
I know one law only: - my character – : when he is dignified, when he
is lofty, I must be too; when he is humble I must be humble; when he
raves, I must be mad; if he is overwhelmed by anger, I must be the
servant of the anger, of passion, less than a man (…). Who has filled
Italian minds with the false rule of a single type of tragic acting (…)?
Modena taught his pupils to get rid of their personality and to enter
fully into each character’s soul. Referring to Duse, Ristori – who had retired
by that time – sharply criticized her, affirming that Duse was not able to
identify herself with the character; she blamed her for performing a limited
range of characters who were all very similar to one another instead of
trying to step out of her own personality to give life to the character:
Io avevo tutti i colori della mia tavolozza, avevo anche una potenza di
fibra, è vero, ma avrei sciupato gli uni e l’altra senza l’ostinata volontà
di uscire dalla mia natura per entrare in quella del tipo che volevo
rappresentare. Invece mi pare che certe attrici non facciano altro che
ridurre alla propria natura tutti i tipi.22
I had all the colours of the palette; I also had a powerful fibre, that is
true, but I would have wasted the former and the latter without my
obstinate will to come out of my nature and enter that of the character
I wanted to represent. I have the feeling, instead, that some actresses
just reduce all the characters to their own nature.
21
22
Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento, p. 24.
Ibid., p. 27.
82
‘Creating the character’ was also Stanislavski’s principal objective
in his work with the actor. It is with a long preparation, with repeated
rehearsals, with the minute study of the character’s feelings and of the
character’s biography (which means creating the character’s entire life, his
or her ideas, thoughts, visions, his or her present, past and future) that an
actor becomes a character. From the last three quotations we can understand
that Italian acting, besides being regarded as spontaneous and individual,
also seemed to be more realistic than the style of the English and American
actors.23 Today we would probably not define the interpretations of the
Italian actors as realistic, but they were so in their time, and their realism
was to be seen in opposition ‘to the more general traditions which might be
called “idealized” or “poetic” in style’ that better applied to the French or
the English tradition.24 French actors still followed classical models; their
style was still very declamatory, whereas the Italians added such passion
and violence sometimes that their performances could be even disturbing to
some. So, if the French classical model influenced significantly Italian
criticism on Shakespeare in the eighteenth century, as I illustrated in the
previous chapter, the same model did not shape Italian acting in the
following century. In his book Carlson makes a comparison between Ristori
and the French actress Rachel who:
was the embodiment of French classicism – passionate, but passionate
in a manner rigidly controlled by a long tradition of movement and
declamation, in works of highly structured proportion and balance.25
In the same chapter Marvin Carlson clearly explains how the Italian
actors showed realism using contrasts, both with the voice – which they
could use in any way they wished so they would alternate shouts with
whispers – and with movements: they would shift from little gestures to
ample ones to create contrasting emotions. Gestures and movements were
23
For an analysis of Stanislavski’s work with the actors see Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, Il
lavoro dell’attore ed. Gerardo Guerrieri (Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1982), p. XX.
24
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 180.
25
Ibid., pp. 180-181.
83
an important feature of their acting; they would always portray the actions
with some impressive physical representations, and that was very different
from the English style.26 Contrasts also characterised the structure of the
play – impassioned scenes alternated with quiet ones – and it was also
common to build up a scene with long preparation. Examples are Ristori’s
sleepwalking scene or Salvini’s rage against Iago which was the result of a
long crescendo. Both characteristics, the use of contrasts and the crescendo,
recall the style of opera singers, which certainly influenced the
performances of the actors.27
How did this typically Italian style compare with what we can call –
borrowing Carlson’s definition – ‘the English acting style’? In the chapter
‘Macready, Irving and Self-Control’ in Shakespeare and the Victorians,
Adrian Poole draws a parallel between the kind of acting of the best-known
English actors of the nineteenth century – Charles Macready (1793-1873)
and, later on, Henry Irving (1838-1905)28 – and Victorian manners.29 From
his analysis we can understand why ‘the Italian way’ was seen as alien in
the English-speaking world. He points out that Macready acted for forty
years but, of these, only the last third were under the reign of Victoria. Yet
his style could be defined as Victorian in terms of restraint, intellectuality,
and scholarliness.30 The same restraint and intellectuality or, as he calls it, ‘a
strong sense of “inwardness”’ were the features of Irving’s acting. 31 In other
words, he and his predecessors tried to apply the Victorian strict code of
behaviour to life on the stage. Passions could be expressed, but inwardly.
The result was a kind of fight between on the one hand the urge of the
instincts, emotions and passions to burst, and on the other the need to keep
them under control and to express them with little gestures, facial
expressions, or the simple movement of the eyes. Therefore, the physicality
26
Ibid., pp. 181-182.
See the section dedicated to Verdi in chapter 1.
28
By 1819 Macready was firmly established at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane in
London. Irving became manager of the Lyceum in 1878 and ‘ruled’ for twenty years. In
1899 management was taken over by Lyceum Ltd.
29
Adrian Poole, Shakespeare and the Victorians (London: Thomson Learning, 2004).
30
Ibid., p. 32.
31
Ibid., p. 35.
84
27
of actors like Salvini with his powerful voice, comparable to the voice of an
opera singer, was everything that Macready and Irving were not. To English
self-control the Italians opposed a ‘more violent and emotional style’.32
The love of Rossi, Salvini and Ristori for the English playwright is
undeniable, yet they rearranged his plays to a great extent. Schino compares
the Great Actors’ relationship with Shakespeare’s characters with the
relationship that Shakespeare may have had with Giraldi Cinthio, the author
that had told Othello’s story before him. Shakespeare almost always worked
from sources, but treated them with great flexibility and even inaccuracy –
which we may regard as irreverent or creative. In both cases Schino defines
this relationship as ‘un luogo di incontro’ (‘a meeting place’),33 a definition
which I will discuss further on in the chapter. Let us have a look at facts
now. In the hands of the Great Actors Shakespeare’s plays were totally
purged of the historic-political dimension, of any obscenity or ambiguous
words and phrases that would not have been accepted by nineteenth-century
morality, and of digressions and minor characters. The action revolved
around the star, which meant changes and cuts: the scenes that did not
enhance the protagonist’s characterization were reduced or deleted,
secondary actors were there mainly to support the star, and stage setting was
scarce. When Ristori accepted the role of Lady Macbeth, the play really
became Lady Macbeth: Macbeth was reduced to a minor character, totally
subjugated to his wife, and the actor chosen to play the role was usually
weak in order to mark the contrast with Ristori’s bravura. Ristori even asked
the translator Giulio Carcano to change the title into Lady Macbeth, which
he refused to do. Just to have an idea of these actors’ interventions in the
texts, we can have a look at what remained of Shakespeare’s Macbeth after
Ristori’s cuts. In act 1 she cut scenes 1, 2, and 4; what remained was
Macbeth and Banquo’s encounter with the witches which was immediately
followed by scene 3 where Lady Macbeth reads the letter sent by her
husband. This was the first apparition of Ristori on the stage. The actress
32
33
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 181.
Schino, Racconti del Grande Attore, p. 10.
85
started to build her character showing from the beginning strong emotions
and accompanying the words with ample and very precise gestures. Act 2
remained intact with the exception of the Porter’s sequence in scene 3, and
scene 4 was more faithful to the original than any contemporary English
version. The Porter’s scene was presumably not considered necessary, as it
did not imply the presence of Ristori on stage. Emphasis lay on the dialogue
between Macbeth and his wife after the murder of Duncan in scene 2, and
on Lady Macbeth’s reaction to the news of Duncan’s murder. Although
Lady is not given many lines in the text, all the attention had to be drawn to
Ristori’s facial expression, gestures, and movements. In act 3 only scene 2
and scene 4 were preserved, the two scenes in which Lady Macbeth is on
stage. Scene 2 is the second ‘duet’ between Lady Macbeth and her husband,
after Macbeth has given orders to the murderers to kill Banquo. It is in this
scene that Ristori started to show a changed attitude and signs of weakness
that would lead to the sleepwalking scene. Act 4 and act 5 were combined.
Ristori’s act 4 started with the exchange between Malcolm and Macduff (act
4, scene 3 in Shakespeare) followed by the sleepwalking scene which, in the
original, is in act 5, scene 1. Scenes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 from act 5 were
reduced to the minimum, as the sleepwalking sequence was the climax of
the production and of Ristori’s performance. In effect, Ristori’s exit marked
the end of the play although there were still a few brief scenes. The practice
of rearranging acts and scenes in order to allow the star to be the last one to
leave the stage or to have the last word was very common and, as we will
see further on in this section, it was typical of English actors too.34 Ristori’s
sleepwalking scene, for which the rest of the play became a sort of
preparation, and which was sometimes presented as an afterpiece, became
immensely popular, and people would applaud every time she performed
it.35
34
To make another example, Rossi’s Hamlet ended with the line ‘The rest is silence’, and
the character of Fortinbras did not appear at all in this version.
35
For a detailed description of Ristori’s performance as Lady Macbeth see Carlson, The
Italian Shakespearians, pp. 36-46, and Laura Caretti, ‘La regia di Lady Macbeth’, in Il
teatro del personaggio, ed. Laura Caretti, 147-180.
86
Figure 1: Adelaide Ristori as Lady Macbeth
Salvini’s and Rossi’s work on the texts was very similar. Salvini cut
scene 1, in which Othello does not appear, from act 1 of his Otello, because,
as Carlson tells us, the ‘production (...) was designed to focus on the star,
who should be brought on stage as soon as possible and kept there through
most of the evening’.
36
Moreover, choices were also made so that the
audience’s attention would focus on the star even when another actor was
speaking lines. Carlson tells us that Salvini’s reactions were ‘as complex
and specific as the gestures and expressions which he used to support his
own lines’.37 All this is shown in the photographic documents at our
disposal: we see the actor/actress in costume, while there are no props (only
a painted cloth is visible) or other actors to be seen.38
36
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 61.
Ibid., p. 64.
38
Carlson’s The Italian Shakespearians contains a portfolio of drawings and photographs
of the actors in character.
87
37
Figure 2: Ernesto Rossi as Hamlet
Figure 3: Tommaso Salvini as Hamlet
Figure 4: Ernesto Rossi as Macbeth
Figure 5: Tommaso Salvini as Macbeth
I think it is also important to notice that all the reviews, along with
Carlson’s book, revolve around the interpretation of the actors, while there
is very little reference to the set, or to anything that is linked to an idea of a
general plan, of what became the basis of directing. Only later, toward the
mid-twentieth century, did Shakespeare’s plays start to be studied in their
entirety in Italy. These productions, instead of being informed by textual
scholarship, had much in common with opera with which – as I pointed out
above and in the previous chapter – they were in competition. In both cases
88
the original text was seen as a frame: there was not much difference
between the stripped-down version that a libretto presented of the text and
the texts created by the mid-nineteenth-century actors. The focus was in
both cases on memorable moments that were built little by little in order to
impress the audience. In opera this aim was achieved through the music and
the singers’ virtuosity, in non-musical theatre through the voice, the
gestures, the movements, which all aimed to enhance a particular emotion
and to create the effect.
However, it must not be forgotten that, in some cases, the Italians
preserved scenes or lines that the English deleted. In Salvini’s Otello, for
example, Iago’s more openly sexual lines were kept, while they were
commonly cut in English productions of the time. This may seem strange to
many laymen who would probably think that the English did not rearrange
their Shakespeare and would regard the Italian manipulations as outrageous.
They would be extremely surprised if they knew the true story. Among the
books that trace the history of appropriations and adaptations of
Shakespeare’s plays in Britain, there are Michael Dobson’s The Making of
the National Poet and Poole’s already mentioned Shakespeare and the
Victorians.39 From the first book we learn that, since the re-opening of
theatres in 1660, ‘a series of alternative Shakespeares’40 appeared, and that
they had enduring life and fame. Sir William Davenant’s The Tempest; or
the Enchanted Island, co-written with John Dryden in 1667, Nahum Tate’s
The History of King Lear (1681), and Colley Cibber’s The Tragical History
of King Richard III (1699) are among the best-known. Plays were rewritten
for various reasons: during the constitutional crises of the 1670s and 1680s,
adaptations varied according to what was required from theatre, with some
meant to politicize the stage, and others aimed to depoliticize it. More often
than not, affirms Dobson, Shakespeare’s plays were rewritten to avoid the
political issues at stake in that period and, consequently, the stress was on
39
Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and
Authorship, 1660-1769 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
40
Ibid., p. 12.
89
‘the private realm of the passions’.41 From the Glorious Revolution to the
1730s, Shakespeare’s plays were polished and corrected so that they would
suit the requirements of the Enlightenment. Therefore, they were deprived
of the gross, earthy, and fleshly elements that appealed to some sections of
the audience, but could not be accepted by the Augustan literary élite.42 The
habit of correcting Shakespeare’s plays went on for a long period and,
although throughout the nineteenth century there were attempts to restore
the original texts, in 1876 the Irish actor Barry Sullivan was still playing
Cibber’s Richard III at Drury Lane,43 and Irving’s King Lear of 1892 still
bore the influence of Tate’s version.44 It must also be pointed out that what
Carlson defines as ‘the grand manner’ of Italian performance – that is the
custom of giving very little regard to the overall play and focusing all the
attention on the leading actor – did not differ much from the English or
American style.45 Irving, for example, did not feel in the wrong when he cut
an estimated 46 per cent of King Lear for his staging or, like the Italians,
made changes that allowed him to have the last word before the exit of the
actors.46
Even in terms of stage set the Victorian actors did not try to
reproduce what the stage would have been in Shakespeare’s times. On the
contrary, until the beginning of the twentieth century Shakespeare on stage
meant spectacle, and Poole speaks of ‘a series of monumental
Shakespearian productions that went on up to the outbreak of war’ (First
World War).47 Poole also registers Henry James’s comment on Irving’s
Romeo and Juliet which, according to him, the actor-manager had
41
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 101.
43
Thomas Barry Sullivan (1824-1891) started his career playing minor Shakespearian parts
to Charles Kean’s lead. By 1844 he was playing leading roles. He worked in Great Britain,
the U.S.A., and Australia.
44
Poole, Shakespeare and the Victorians, p. 19.
45
Ibid., p. 175.
46
Ibid., p. 20
47
Ibid., p. 23
90
42
transformed ‘from a splendid and delicate poem into a gorgeous and overweighted spectacle’.48
In the light of all this, we understand that the approach of the Italians
to Shakespeare’s texts was not substantially different from that of the
English; and we may also feel more inclined to ‘justify’ the Italians’ rewritings if we consider that they were working on translations that were still
far from faithful.
This discussion acquires even greater force if we consider what
happened in Shakespeare’s times, and if we try to answer the question:
‘What is Shakespeare’? I am referring to all the changes that the plays went
through from composition to the first representation on the stage to the
printed text. I am hinting at the different versions of the same play that we
possess today, the quarto and the folio texts, which create many problems to
editors and to translators; and also at the collaborations between playwrights
at the time of Shakespeare, that sometimes make it difficult to tell which
lines in a play belong to Shakespeare and which do not. I will return to these
issues in chapter 3, where I will deal with the birth of directing in Italy in
the first decades of the twentieth century. The reason for locating discussion
of textual issues in this chapter lies in the fact that directing in Italy was
primarily born with the aim to offer a philological reading of the playtexts
and, through the staging, to restore the originals after the manipulations of
the age of the actors.
What is remarkable is that the Italian actors took Shakespeare even
to England and to America, performing in Italian and meeting huge success.
It must be said that they toured mainly for economic reasons since, as we
saw, in Italy there was very little financial support from the state to the
theatre. Travelling, however, was not only a habit of Italian actors. Poole
notices that English and American actors also toured extensively. Besides
visiting various towns outside London, where they earned much more than
they would have performing in the capital only, the former often travelled to
America.
48
Ibid., p. 26
91
Touring across (…) Britain and Ireland and North America meant that
they became agents and icons of identity, (…) all the more powerfully
when identity was stamped with the mythic force of Hamlet or Lear,
or Juliet or Lady Macbeth. (…) Shakespeare carried ‘authority’.49
Macready made two trips to the United States, the first in 1826 and the
second in the 1840s; Irving crossed the Atlantic eight times. At the same
time, the Americans came to continental Europe and to England: Ira
Aldridge left America because of the persistent discrimination which black
actors endured in the United States, and he never returned. Edwin Booth
arrived in London in 1861 and then again in the 1880s.50 All of them found
substantial reward across the Atlantic. As for the Italians, Ristori made
seven English and four American tours between 1856 and 1885; Salvini
made a tour of South America in 1871 and an extensive American tour in
1873-74; Rossi performed a little in London and made a tour of the United
States in 1881-82.
Their English and American tours are quite remarkable for many
reasons. The first one who made an American tour was Ristori. It is for this
tour that the sort of press publicity that we know today began. Ristori was
introduced in America by an entrepreneur called Jacob Grau who risked the
huge sum of $ 50,000 for her tour. The arrival of the star was preceded by
daily articles in various papers dealing not only with details of her tour but
also with information – not always true – about her private life. She was
accommodated in luxury hotels, and she was constantly busy with
interviews, dinner parties, and social occasions. Ristori gadgets were
launched, copies of the Macbeth libretto were distributed.51 As a
consequence, Ristori’s success was a certainty before the star began her
performances. More or less the same happened with Salvini and Rossi,
49
Ibid., pp. 10-11.
Ibid.
51
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 29.
92
50
though – for reasons that I will explain a little further – the last was not as
successful as the first two. 52
For these American productions the three actors did not always
present a whole play: sometimes they just acted the best-known excerpts
from different plays in one evening. They acted mainly in Italian, and
translations were often quite flat, sometimes even a bit ridiculous for
English/American-speaking audiences who, despite this, loved their
performances because of their powerful stage presence and their Italian way
of acting. Thanks to their propensity for gesture the audiences were able to
understand what was going on especially if they more or less knew the plot
of the play. Moreover, little by little the actors started to introduce some
English and there were productions that were conducted in the two
languages. The Italian actor would speak in Italian while the other actors,
who were often American or English, would reply in English!
Tommaso Salvini seems to have been the best Othello. It is very
interesting to read Henry James’s opinion in The Scenic Art:
His powerful, active, manly frame, his noble, serious, vividly
expressive face, his splendid smile, his Italian eye, his superb,
voluminous voice, his carriage, his tone, his ease, the assurance he
instantly gives that he holds the whole part in his hands and can make
of it exactly what he chooses (...). He is a magnificent creature and
you are already on his side.53
And in the London Spectator of 17 April 1975 he writes:
His voice is surprisingly beautiful; flexible beyond belief; full of
musical inflexions, of change, of passion, of tenderness, and tears (...).
His articulation is so distinct that every word is heard with ease in the
52
For a complete analysis of their tours see Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians.
Carlson, The Italian Shakespearians, p. 61. James’s The Scenic Art was published in
New York in 1857.
93
53
most distant parts of the theatre, and not the least effort attends his
most passionate outbursts.54
Rossi was less successful in America. This is probably due to the fact
that, when he arrived in 1881, the American audience was perhaps a bit tired
of these Italian Shakespearian performances since they had seen a number
by then, but it cannot be denied that on the whole the audiences loved the
Italian performers. It was not always the same for critics. Along with good
reviews like the one published in the New York Tribune on 7 August 1881,
there were also some negative ones. The main criticism that was made of
the Italians was the fact that their style did not conform to the English way
of acting Shakespeare’s characters. In particular, it was believed that Italian
actors, known for their passion typical of Mediterranean people, were not fit
for interpreting northern types like Hamlet, an intellectually complicated
character. That is the reason why they praised Salvini’s interpretation of
Othello, a southerner who, in their opinion, was not that different from the
Italian interpreters. James shared this opinion. Referring to Salvini’s Othello
he stated:
A study of pure feeling – of passion, with as little as possible of that
intellectual iridescence which (...) less visible, or at any rate less
essential, in the Moor of Venice than in the other great parts, puts the
character much more within Salvini’s grasp than the study of Hamlet,
of Lear, of Macbeth.55
Similar is James’s comment on Rossi’s Othello:
Rossi is both very bad and very fine; bad when anything like taste and
discretion is required, but ‘all there’, and much more than there, in
violent passion.56
54
Ibid., pp. 61-62.
Ibid., p. 177.
56
Ibid., p. 181.
55
94
Such comments are prejudiced and sound even racist but, as I hope
it is clear from my analysis, there were undeniable differences between the
way Shakespeare was presented by the Italians and the typical AngloAmerican way. Yet, even within America or England, there were different
actors with different styles. In America, for example, the extrovert Edwin
Forrest was contrasted to the introverted Booth.57 And in England the most
popular predecessor of Macready and Irving, Edmund Kean (1787-1833),
was an explosive, passionate, and physical actor.
Before moving on to talk about the generation of the mattatori, I
wish to draw some conclusions on the figure of the Great Actor and on the
work that the Great Actors did with Shakespeare’s plays, and complete my
discussion of this first section. I want to return to Schino’s definition of the
relationship of the Great Actors with Shakespeare’s plays as ‘un luogo di
incontro’ (‘a meeting place’). Quite rightly, I think, she compared this
relationship with the relationship that Shakespeare may have had with the
original sources of his plays. In the same way as Shakespeare created his
own art drawing from already existing material – and doing it so freely and
flexibly, without a concern for accuracy or authenticity – the Great Actors
created theirs drawing from Shakespeare’s plays.58 She also mentions
Meldolesi, according to whom the work that the Italians did on Shakespeare
was a process of recreation that ‘a tutti gli effetti assumeva caratteristiche
drammaturgiche’59 (‘to all effects acquired dramaturgical characteristics’).
And she argues that we should look at the work of the Great Actors ‘con una
mente sgombra dai paradigmi dell’interpretazione, il che non è quasi mai
possibile’60 (‘with a mind cleared of the paradigms of interpretation, which
is hardly ever possible’). I think that by ‘interpretation’ Schino means
mimesis of the text. The question whether the staging of a play by
Shakespeare should imply authenticity, is an old one and keeps recurring. I
believe that good theatre (or bad theatre) exists independently of whether
57
Poole, Shakespeare and the Victorians, p. 36.
Schino, Racconti del Grande Attore, p. 10.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
95
58
what is offered is a philological reading of the text, or whether the text is
seen as fundamentally unfixed and free for remoulding and reshaping. In the
course of time, there have been various and varied approaches to
Shakespeare’s playtexts, as I hope that my thesis will make clear. But, as I
will illustrate, there have also been returns to older patterns. The important
period of the director’s theatre, which in Italy flourished around the 1940s,
marked the advent of the figure of the theatre director, who saw himself as
the custodian of the text. Men like Strehler affirmed that the director is at
the service of the text and restoring Shakespeare’s original texts was their
objective after the adulterations of the generations of the actors. But against
what is now called the director’s theatre, the experimentalists of the1960s,
like de Berardinis and Bene, reaffirmed the supremacy of the actor and felt
entitled to make the most extreme alterations of Shakespeare’s plays
because, for them, theatre is the creation of a new artwork. Therefore, once
again, the actor acquired dramaturgical functions. Certainly the context was
different. While the experimentalists of the 1960s had all the material they
needed for a philological approach to Shakespeare’s texts (had they been
interested in such an approach), along with a number of translations, the
Great Actors of the mid-nineteenth century still had little at their disposal.
Therefore, it must be recognized that they played an active and fundamental
role in the spreading of the knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare’s
plays in Italy. We are certainly indebted to them as much as we are to a
writer like Manzoni, a composer like Verdi, or a scholar like De Sanctis. I
would like to widen this idea, as their achievements crossed boundaries, by
which I mean that they also contributed to the general knowledge of the
English playwright. I pointed out before that Salvini kept Iago’s more
sexual lines in his Otello, lines that were normally cut in the English
productions of the Victorian age. This means that English audiences would
have a more complete understanding of the character than by watching a
‘home-grown’ production. In addition, although the emotional and
passionate Italian style of acting certainly differed from the English, it
probably helped the understanding of some aspects of the situations
represented, or of the characters interpreted.
96
2.2 The Generation of the Mattatori61
In his book Fondamenti del teatro italiano the writer and critic
Claudio Meldolesi distinguishes five generations of actors performing
between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth.62 First came the forerunners of the Great Actors, born between
1796 and 1803, among whom was Gustavo Modena. Next came the Great
Actors, Rossi, Salvini, Ristori, born between 1822 and 1829. They were
followed by a third group, called mattatori, like Giovanni Emanuel, Ermete
Novelli, Ermete Zacconi and, greatest of all, Eleonora Duse, born between
1848 and 1858. To this generation followed the generation of Ruggero
Ruggeri and Emma Gramatica born between 1871 and 1875. The last
generation was that of Maria Melato, Ettore Petrolini and Memo Benassi,
born between 1885 and 1891. The first glimpses of a renewal of theatre that
would lead to the birth of the director’s theatre in Italy can be traced in the
generation of Emanuel, Zacconi, Novelli and, most of all, Duse.
At the turn of the century Shakespeare was worshipped in many
European countries (there was a real Shakespeare mania in Germany for
example), but Shakespearian performances in Italy in this period were not
so acclaimed as they had been a few decades earlier at the time of Rossi,
Ristori and Salvini. What the Italian public had loved of Shakespeare in the
performances of the mid-1800s were the great tragic roles played by Rossi,
Salvini and Ristori; they had loved the actors more than the characters and,
without any doubts, more than the plays. Until the beginning of the First
World War, that is after a century of Italian Shakespearian productions, the
61
As I pointed out in footnote 10 at p. 20, it is impossible to give an English equivalent for
the term mattatore. It was Alessandro D’Amico who, for the first time, distinguished
between the Great Actors, and actors who were great but were not the Great Actors. The
acting of the mattatori was made of vocal modulations, of characterizing details, of perfect
diction, of small effects, as opposed to the emphasis put by the Great Actors on impressive
movements and gestures.
62
Claudio Meldolesi, Fondamenti del teatro italiano. La generazione dei registi (Firenze:
Sansoni Editore Nuova, 1984), p.12.
97
public still preferred bourgeois dramas and French pochades.63 More than to
the great tragedies of the English playwright or to the Greek tragedies, they
felt attracted to contemporary stories unfolding within the boundaries of a
household, stories of unhappy marriages, of adultery, of betrayed women.
Of course such themes were also present in Shakespeare’s plays, but the
distinction I want to draw rests upon contemporaneity and the ‘high style’ of
Shakespeare’s tragedies. The Italian playwrights, on their side, wished to
contribute to the debate on important contemporary questions, like the socalled questione femminile (the issue of women), divorce, the division of
society into classes, and the comparison between the aristocracy and the
middle class, questions which attracted the sympathy of the authors and
public. Examples of Italian dramaturgy are La morte civile by Paolo
Giacometti – composed in 1861 – in which a man, sentenced to life
imprisonment, commits suicide after escaping from prison to let his wife
marry another man since divorce did not exist; or Achille Torelli’s I mariti –
written in 1867 – where the good husband is identified with the good
middle-class man. Among the writers of the last decades of the nineteenth
century we can also mention Giuseppe Giacosa and Marco Praga and, of
course, Giovanni Verga, the most prominent writer of Italian Verismo, with
his Cavalleria rusticana (1883), La lupa (1896), In portineria (1885), and
Dal tuo al mio (1903).
Despite not being very popular in Italy, there were some performances
of Shakespeare’s plays at the turn of the century. Among the actors of the
second generation, there is a name worth mentioning: Giovanni Emanuel
(1847-1902). Emanuel was an actor but he probably played a more
important role as an acting teacher. Though his command of English was
rather limited, he tried to read Shakespeare in the original for two main
reasons: firstly because he was not at all satisfied with the existing
translations by Rusconi and Carcano (the only ones that were still used at
63
The word pochade is derived from the nineteenth-century French verb pocher meaning to
sketch, and it is ususally related to painting. In the field of theatre a pochade was a light
comedy, a sketch.
98
the end of the century); secondly because he was against the tradition of the
Great Actors and their habit of cutting the text. He believed that these
performances failed to offer a knowledge of the text in its entirety, and
mutilated the character who cannot be shown in his complexity and in all his
nuances if deprived of the context and of the relations to other, even minor,
characters. And he was well aware that the inadequacies of translations
greatly contributed to the misunderstanding of the text. Emanuel, therefore,
should be remembered because he paved the way for the philological
approach to Shakespeare which would be the trademark of the work of the
first great Italian directors in the 1940s and 1950s. On the other hand,
however, he was also a representative of the new tendencies of Naturalism
and Verism. The result, as far as Shakespeare is concerned, was not brilliant.
Adapting Shakespeare’s language to the current cult of truth and of
everyday situations meant flattening the language and losing the poetry.
This was probably the main problem with Shakespeare’s plays at that time.
The theatre of Verismo was a theatre made of vocal modulations, of
characterizing details, of perfect diction, of small effects all aimed at the
faithful representation of reality, elements that did not always match with
the great tragic heroes of Shakespeare’s plays. At the end of 1899 Ristori
(who was seventy years old) wrote in a letter to Salvini who had asked her
about the new art:
Io, modestamente sono d’avviso che l’attuale forma di interpretazione
è falsa e acrobatica! E che noi dobbiamo essere orgogliosi di essere
stati quello che fummo, seguaci della verità e della manifestazione
della grand’arte.64
I humbly think that the current acting style is false and acrobatic! And
that we must be proud of having been what we were, pursuers of the
truth and of the representation of the great art.
64
Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel Secondo Ottocento, p.222. Emphases original.
99
What can be understood from these words is that the actors of the previous
generation could not trace any art in the work of their successors.
What Ristori said (rightly or wrongly) can be perfectly applied to two
other actors belonging to the generation of the mattatori: Ermete Novelli
(1851-1919) and Ermete Zacconi (1857-1948). Zacconi was and is generally
considered a master of the new naturalistic acting style but not a good
Shakespearian performer. He was Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Shylock,
and Coriolanus but none of these interpretations was particularly praised.
Silvio D’Amico (critic and founder, in 1934, of the first Italian school for
actors and directors, Regia Scuola d’Arte Drammatica [Royal School of
Dramatic Art]) was particularly harsh:
Il suo ‘Macbeth’ era tanto incolore, prolisso e monotono, da render
possibile questo tour de force: annoiare il pubblico con l’opera più
densa, fervida e fascinatrice che sia mai apparsa su le scene.65
His ‘Macbeth’ was so dull, long and monotonous that he made this
tour de force possible: boring the public with the most intense, ardent
and bewitching play that has ever been staged.
Ermete Novelli also performed in some of Shakespeare’s plays. His
masterpiece was his interpretation of Shylock who, at that time, was the best
loved Shakespearian character of this generation of actors since he is not
heroic, but is imbued with prosaic worldliness which makes of him a more
modern character. The title was: Shylock and, in brackets, after Mercante di
Venezia di Guglielmo Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice from William
Shakespeare). That is enough to understand what kind of play he offered.
He altered it significantly, he isolated the character but, on the other hand,
he made a very accurate study of Shylock. This is the opinion expressed by
Silvio D’Amico:
65
Silvio D’Amico, Tramonto del grande attore, p. 72.
100
Non resta, dunque, a considerare altro che l’ebreo. Diciamo subito che
Ermete Novelli, quanto mostra di avere rinunziato ad intendere il
poema,
altrettanto
è
entrato
nello
spirito
del
carattere
shakespeariano.66
It only remains, then, to consider none other than the Jew. Let us say
at once that Ermete Novelli has entered the spirit of the Shakespearian
character in the same measure in which he has given up trying to
understand the poem.
D’Amico admitted that Novelli had understood Shylock’s character
fully, his degradation, his stubbornness, his meanness, his despair. Makeup,
gestures, movements, voice, all were perfect according to the critic. Novelli
was able to create true characters, vibrating with life; he used the texts – or
pre-texts – to create portraits of old men, good or wicked, generous or mean,
fat or slim, rich or poor.67 Once again the focus was on the character and
only the character!
Figure 6: Ermete Novelli as Shylock
The case of Duse (1858-1924) perfectly represented the bridge
between the Italian theatre of the nineteenth century and the new ideas that
66
Silvio D’Amico, Maschere-Note sull’interpretazione scenica (Roma: Mondadori, 1921),
p. 63.
67
By ‘pre-text’ I mean the use of a playtext almost as an excuse to create a completely
different play on the stage. In other words, a source which the actor (or the director)
manipulates freely to create his or her own artwork.
101
were spreading in Europe in the last decades of that century. As a matter of
fact, the years between 1870 and 1880 marked the advent of the first
recognized experiences of the director’s theatre. The first protagonists of
this theatrical revolution were the Duke of Meiningen in Germany and
Antoine in France. Not much later followed Stanislavski in Russia (who
founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1897); Gordon Craig (with his theory of
the Über-Marionette to replace the actor) in England; and Adolphe Appia
(who explained his ideas about theatre in three books: La messa in scena del
dramma wagneriano, 1895; La musica e la messa in scena, 1899; L’opera
d’arte vivente, 1921) in Switzerland.68 As for England there had been other
figures who anticipated the modes of the director’s theatre. William Poel,
for example, who founded the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1895, tried to
stage plays that used a unified acting ensemble in opposition to the theatre
of the star actor, and to restore textual and historical authenticity. Or Harley
Granville-Barker (1877-1946) who, under the influence of Poel, did away
with the star system of acting and concentrated on excellence in the entire
ensemble too.
Duse was an extraordinary actress who introduced a very personal
way of acting. She was not, like Ristori, inclined to ample movements and
effective big gestures; she did not raise her voice as the actors of the
previous generation did. Her acting was made of silences, whispers, and
small gestures aimed at entering the soul of the character. Duse came from a
family of touring actors who struggled for their living; she started to act as a
young child. She played Juliet in Verona in May 1875 when she was only
fourteen, and before the age of twenty she had also been Cordelia, Ophelia
and Desdemona. Apart from these roles in some of Shakespeare’s plays (as
usual in versions that did not share much with the original text), her
repertory included mainly the French who were very popular in Italy, like
the younger Dumas and Sardou, thanks to whom she became the most loved
actress of her time. But she had something else in mind; she was ‘sick of a
68
I will expand on the founding fathers of directing in the next chapter.
102
Theatre without Art’.69 Despite meeting huge success with the French plays
and plays by the Italian Capuana and Verga, she became intolerant of the
mediocre standards prevalent on the Italian stage. She had become
acquainted with the work of Antoine and with his innovative stage design
and lighting. It was the meeting with Arrigo Boito (1842-1918) in 1887 and
their love relationship that marked a big change in her career. Boito was a
learned man and a lover of the arts; he had already composed the libretto for
Verdi’s Otello when he met Duse in 1887. Boito became Duse’s lover but,
more importantly probably, he became her mentor and guide. He
encouraged her to abandon that French, commercial repertoire, he
encouraged her to read, and he convinced her to devote her talent to the true
art: the work of Shakespeare. Acting Shakespeare meant breaking the bond
with the commercial French theatre and taking up a mission. The result of
this encounter was Antonio e Cleopatra, translated and adapted by Boito
(from the French translation made by Victor Hugo’s son) for Duse and
premièred in Milan, at the Teatro Manzoni, on 22 November 1888. The
letters written by Boito before and after the show help us understand what
the aim was and what the result.
(20 November 1888)
Non m’inganno, l’opera è grande e tu sei degna dell’opera e il
risultato sarà degno dell’alto ardimento. Io so Shakespeare e so il
Teatro e so Lenor [Duse]. (...) Fidati! (...) Questo t’appartiene per
diritto di Dio! Dunque, va! Entra nella tragedia gloriosa, e tu gloriosa
n’escirai. (...) Domani t’aspetta una missione grande, una santa
missione d’arte. Se non la vinci domani, tu, si aspetteranno dei secoli
prima che la vinca un’altra.70
69
Quoted in Susan Bassnett, ‘Eleonora Duse’ in Stole, Booth, and Bassnett Bernhardt,
Terry, Duse, p. 124. Emphasis original.
70
Eleonora Duse – Arrigo Boito, Lettere d’amore, ed. Raul Radice (Milano: Il Saggiatore,
1979), p. 289.
103
The play is a classic, you are equal to its greatness, and the result will
be worthy of your enormous courage. I know my Shakespeare, I know
the Theatre and I know my Lenor [Duse]. (…) Trust me! (…) This
belongs to you by divine right. So, go! Enter the glorious tragedy and
you will be glorious. (…) Tomorrow a great mission awaits you, a
holy mission of art. If you do not win it tomorrow, it will be centuries
before another one wins it.
But let us read the letter Boito wrote after the performance:
(23 November 1888)
Brava.
Avevo tanta paura. Grazie. – Si comincia a respirare. Quel lavoro così
breve, così spoglio di tutte le informi ma possenti esuberanze del testo
mi pareva all’ultimo momento una cosa indegna, una calunnia verso
Shakespeare, un tradimento fatto a Lenor. (...) E la colpa è davvero
mia se il successo non seppe raggiungere il suo altissimo culmine
all’ultimo atto. – La causa di ciò sta nella inetta brevità della
riduzione. (...) Ci siamo preoccupati di una cosa sola ed è questa:
estrarre dal possente poema tutta la divina essenza dell’amore e del
dolore e abbiamo chiuso gli occhi sul resto. (...) Se ti ho data una
cattiva riduzione perdonami. – L’ubbriacatura che dura da due anni
ne ha anche una parte di colpa. Bisognerà essere freddi per misurare
con giustezza il pensiero e le speranze (...).71
Brava.
I was so afraid. My heartfelt thanks. – Now I can breathe again. The
play seemed to be so brief, once stripped of all the formless yet
powerful exuberance in the text. At the last minute, I suddenly found
it unworthy, a calumny against Shakespeare, a betrayal of my Lenor.
71
Ibid., p. 290-291.
104
(…) I am truly to blame if the work failed to reach a grand climax in
the final act. This was caused by my inept reduction of the text. (…)
We concentrated on only one aspect in our efforts – to extract from
that powerful poem all the divine essence of love and sorrow, and we
closed our eyes to the rest. It was a mistake. (…) If I have given you a
bad translation, forgive me. (…) This inebriation which has gripped us
for the last two years is also partly to blame. One needs to be detached
in order to measure one’s thoughts and hopes with any precision
(…).72
And in a letter written in January of the following year after the play had
been staged a few times:
4.2.89
Ed ora, a te, coraggio! Questa volta la battaglia di Shakespeare
dev’essere vinta. E’ NECESSARIO. (...) E’ una missione d’arte, ed è
una necessaria missione per te. Finché non farai quella grand’Arte là
sarai sempre sezionata viva ed avrai sempre un’esistenza dolorosa e
assurda. Tu vivi nella perenne esposizione di te. E questa del mostrar
se stessa (e null’altro che se stessa) è una dannazione, una fatica senza
scopo. Ed è ciò che ti fa soffrire o che ti umilia. – Io soffro anche.
Quando in te mostrerai Shakespeare e propagherai l’opera SUA,
quella sarà gloria immacolata!73
And now, over to you! Come on! This time the battle for Shakespeare
must be won. It is NECESSARY. (…) It is a mission of art and it is a
necessary mission for you. As long as you don’t make that great Art,
you will always be dissected alive and your existence will always be
painful and absurd.You live in the perennial exhibition of yourself.
And exhibiting yourself (and nothing but yourself) is a damnation, an
72
73
Quoted in Pontiero, Eleonora Duse: In Life and Art, p. 77.
Ibid., p. 304.
105
aimless fatigue. And it is what makes you suffer or humiliates you. – I
suffer too. When you show Shakespeare in you and spread HIS work,
that will be immaculate glory!
Much can be understood from these three letters. Despite the good
intentions, it is clear from Boito’s words that, once again, what was offered
to the public was a stripped down version of the original text in which the
focus was on the Egyptian queen and on her love relationship with Antony.
Boito was in earnest when he decided to translate Shakespeare for the
greatest contemporary Italian actress because he believed that she deserved
to confront herself with great art and because he felt the need to give new
dignity to the Italian stage, but he was not ready for a more philological
reading of the text. Furthermore, as he affirms, his passion for Duse did not
allow him to be clear-headed enough and the result was that, while
translating, he had the actress in mind more than the playwright and his
work. At the same time, it can be easily inferred from the third letter that,
despite Duse’s wish to change theatre, to bring forth a revolution, she had
not lost the typical vices of the Italian Great Actors.
The Italian reviews were generally bad. Not only was Boito attacked
for his reduction, but also Duse, as it was maintained that she did not have
the ‘physique du role’. She was blamed for her inability to play great
tragedy, for the fact that she was lacking in sensuality, that she was too
ordinary and everyday in her performance to play the role of the great
queen. According to the reviews, moreover, she had not been able to show
Cleopatra’s ambiguity, her doubleness, just leaving a woman in love who, at
the end, commits suicide because of the death of her lover rather than not to
submit to the power of Octavius Caesar.
106
Figure 7: Eleonora Duse as Cleopatra
The play was not at all appreciated in her Italian tour but it did better
abroad. It was taken to Egypt, Russia, and London.74
In order to have a clearer idea of Duse’s role as a bridge between the
actor’s theatre and the director’s theatre, I wish to dedicate this section to
her collaboration with Gabriele D’Annunzio.75 Despite the scarce success of
her Shakespearian interpretation, her desire to create a theatre of art
remained and found its second possibility in the encounter with D’Annunzio
in 1897. The love she felt for the man was strong and passionate but it
ended after a few years because of his infidelities in life as well as in art. At
the time of their meeting Duse was trying hard to get rid of the cliché of the
Great Actor to devote her talent to the poet and to the poet’s creation: the
text. She had travelled around Europe and had come into contact with the
new European trends; she wished to create a theatre of the author, in which
the actors should serve the author and the text. D’Annunzio demanded
exactly that. He can be considered the first Italian director, a playwrightdirector. Like Wagner, he dreamt about the global work of art where
poetical word, music and dance should be reconciled. He imagined a
74
For a detailed analysis of the Italian reviews and for Boito’s reduction see: Laura
Vazzoler, ‘Eleonora Duse e Arrigo Boito: lo spettacolo sull’ “Antonio e Cleopatra” di
Shakespeare’, Biblioteca Teatrale - Rivista trimestrale di studi e ricerche sullo spettacolo,
6/7 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1973), 65-119.
75
Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) wrote novels, poetry, and drama. He was also a
journalist and was a soldier during World War I. He was associated with the Decadent
movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and
British Aestheticism.
107
poetical theatre that retrieved the sacred dimension of the performance and
that broke the bond with the bourgeois drama. He despised what he
considered the bad habits of the Great Actors; he looked for amateur actors
to be shaped by him and, in this regard, he resembled the ‘fathers’ of the
modern European directing (and of Modena before him). His plays were full
of stage directions, thus leaving very little margin of freedom to the actor
who was just one of the instruments to vehicle the poet’s words. In La città
morta (spring 1901) Duse was required to act away from the front stage,
giving her back to the public, distanced from the audience. D’Annunzio was
a strong opponent of Verismo; that was not art to him; his plays should not
be the mere, naturalistic representation of everyday life. Therefore he
opposed his ‘teatro di poesia’ (‘poetical theatre’ – ‘literary theatre’, a trend
that was to be continued by the first great Italian directors) to the bourgeois
theatre of the time. But problems between him and Duse arose soon: on the
one hand, D’Annunzio lacked the necessary experience as a director; the
cost of his productions for example were too high; on the other, despite her
efforts and goodwill and despite her profession of faith in the supreme value
of Art and her determination to serve the poet, Duse had been brought up in
the tradition of the Great Actor. Therefore, D’Annunzio’s attitude (together
with his infidelities) became unbearable. Duse resumed all her typical bad
habits like skipping rehearsals. When their relationship ended in 1904, Duse
went back to the French plays but also took up Ibsen and came into contact
with some of the European innovators like Craig. After a first wave of
enthusiasm on either side (after meeting him in Berlin in 1906, Duse invited
him to design the sets for Ibsen’s Rosmersholm), they clashed violently at
the beginning of 1907 when Rosmersholm was touring the French Riviera.
The reason for this was the fact that Craig’s sets had to be modified, as the
theatres were not big enough for his original plan. When he saw the set in
Nice, he rushed to Duse’s hotel and said to her ‘Come quick, urgent, they
are ruining my scenery’. Duse’s reply was ‘Sir, what they are doing to your
scenery now … they’ve been doing to my art all my life’!76
76
Pontiero, Eleonora Duse, p. 231.
108
Times seemed not to be ready for a director’s theatre in Italy.
**********
Duse died in 1924. As I said, she has been identified as the
watershed between the old and the new, between the demands of the Great
Actor on one side, and the need for a new generation of actors more inclined
to serve the text on the other, between stagings that used the text just as a
pre-text to show the mastery of the lead actor/actress and new trends aimed
at giving it new value and at showing it in its entirety. In his essay L’attore
italiano tra Otto e Novecento, Sandro D’Amico states that the actors of the
following generation looked at Duse and learned a lot from her.77 That
would be the generation of the actor-interpreters, interpreters of the text, the
first of whom was Ruggero Ruggeri.78 Those were also the years in which
the echoes of the new European trends had reached Italy, and the debate
over the necessity to introduce in the theatre a new figure, whose task
should be that of tracing the theatrical essence in the text and transforming it
into theatrical action, was now inevitable. But actually, nothing new had
happened yet. As we noticed earlier on in the chapter and as Silvio
D’Amico observes in the first chapter of his book Tramonto del grande
attore79, at the end of the nineteenth century, among the names of the great
European actors, most were Italian; among those of the metteurs-en-scene in
the first decades of the twentieth, not even one was Italian. D’Amico
concludes this interesting chapter, affirming with strength that it was no
longer possible to improvise in Italy; it was necessary to set up a serious
acting and directing school (which he did in 1934), to train a new generation
77
Sandro D’Amico, ‘L’attore italiano tra Otto e Novecento’, in Petrolini: la maschera e la
storia ed. Franca Angelini (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1984), 25-38 (p. 36).
78
It would be too long to expand on the actor-interpreters here and not necessary to
understand the evolution from acting to directing I am talking about.
79
Silvio D’Amico, Tramonto del grande attore, p. 28.
109
of actors, and to produce the new figure: the metteur-en-scene (the word
regista [director] still did not exist in Italy); and it was also fundamental to
travel, to study abroad, not to copy but to develop new personal ideas. It is a
concept that recalls what Mme de Stael had stated to justify the need for the
Italians of translating the works of foreign authors.
It is in the light of these new thoughts and trends that Shakespeare’s
plays were put on stage in Italy in the first decades of the twentieth century,
but it is worthwhile to notice that the first directors who worked with
Shakespeare in Italy were not Italian: Max Reinhardt, Jacques Coupeau, and
Peter Scharoff. But, after these productions, a number of Italian directors
would offer many more, some of which rank among the best productions of
Shakespeare’s plays on a European level. The generation of the directors
will be the subject of the third chapter of my journey.
110
3. Shakespeare in the Director’s Theatre (1947-1978)
Among the directors who revolutionized Italian theatre from the
mid-twentieth century, Giorgio Strehler was the most influential. It is on his
work, and in particular on his productions of Shakespeare’s plays, that I will
focus my attention in this chapter. Having illustrated what we mean by the
actor’s theatre and how Shakespeare’s texts were rearranged by the Great
Actors, it is now important to reflect upon what directing is, and on when
and how directing was born in Europe. After this section which will be
mostly theoretical, I will tell the story of the foundation of Strehler’s theatre,
the Piccolo Teatro della Città di Milano, and of its significance as the first
civic public theatre set up in Italy. Then, I will focus on Strehler as a
director, and on his first productions of Shakespeare’s plays. The bulk of the
chapter is constituted by his productions of Re Lear and of La Tempesta,
two case studies which I will use to investigate how Shakespeare’s texts
were put on stage according to the new requirements of the director’s
theatre.
I have chosen 1947 and 1978 as the date-boundaries of this chapter,
as in 1947 the Piccolo Teatro was founded in Milan and in 1978 Strehler
directed his production of La Tempesta.
**********
3.1 From the Actor’s Theatre to the Director’s Theatre
Alonge considers the director’s theatre as the theatre in which the
mise-en-scène is seen as a product that must be treated in its entirety, as
opposed to the actor’s theatre in which only the figure of the lead actor was
exalted. The director’s theatre absorbs the actor, who becomes one of the
111
elements of the ‘finished product’.1 According to Schino, the Great Actor
united various personalities – and aspects of theatre, I would say – in his
sole presence, as if multiple viewpoints were united in a single person. In
the director’s theatre the entire scenic space comes to life as ‘un unico
animale in movemento’ (‘a unique animal in motion’).2 The Great Actor
was one, and his oneness was enough to satisfy the eyes of the audience and
to fill the space; the directors replaced the oneness of the actors with the
oneness of the scenic space which, through the props, the lights, the sounds,
the music, and the actors’ presence, became ‘un corpo unico’ (‘a single
body’).3
Most scholars trace the birth of the director’s theatre from the last
decades of the nineteenth century, but Alonge points out that forms of
directing were already present in the eighteenth century. He then draws
attention to the Paris of the first decades of the nineteenth century, full of
theatres and of specialized magazines. Paris was the centre of the world. If a
production was successful there it was taken to the provinces. But it could
not be changed, it could only be an exact replica of what had been staged in
Paris. For this purpose the so-called livrets scéniques were published, which
were like instruction booklets used in the provinces to duplicate the show
that had been staged in Paris. The livrets contained every single aspect of
the staging: the list of characters and of the corresponding actors, the
costumes, the sets, the props, entrances and exits of the actors, how they
should move, and where they should go.4 This was not really what we mean
today by directing. In fact, the function of the livrets was that of reproducing
exactly the same show day after day in Paris and in the provinces, in the
belief that to one text could correspond only one staging. The real
innovation was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century, when
directing became an artistic process as well as being an organizational one.
Directing as an artistic activity considers the text as one, but the stagings as
1
Alonge, Il teatro dei registi: scopritori di enigmi e poeti della scena, p. IX.
Schino, La nascita della regia teatrale, p. 36.
3
Ibid., p. 38.
4
Alonge, Il teatro dei registi, p. 5.
112
2
multiple, as many different interpretations are possible.5 But in the first half
of the nineteenth century this idea of directing was still to come. Alonge
suggests that the first directors were the authors. Many examples of this
double role are to be found in the history of theatre. If we go back to five
hundred years before Christ, we find Aeschylus and Sophocles who were
authors and directors. And if we think of Shakespeare – or any sixteenthcentury playwright – we can consider them as the directors of their own
plays. Most likely Shakespeare participated in rehearsals, and he frequently
wrote stage directions into the script that were clear cues for his actors and
for actors today.6 And Alonge draws attention to the productions of the
Comédie Française of plays by contemporary authors. If that were the case,
the author would do the casting, would read the text to the actors and
explain it to them, and would follow – and practically decide on – every
aspect of the staging.7 In Germany, as I have already pointed out in the
previous chapter, an author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, can be
considered one of the first directors.
Theories about directing as we know it today, and experiments with
new kinds of stagings, date back to the second half of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth when, in various countries of Europe,
different ideas were conceived, books were written, and plays were put on
stage. I have already mentioned the protagonists of this theatrical revolution
in the previous chapter: the German Duke of Meiningen (1826-1914) who
founded the Meininger Company, which started its activity in Saxony in
1870; the French Antoine (1858-1943) who set up his Théâtre Libre in Paris
in 1887 and which became the seat of Naturalistic Theatre; and not much
later the Russian Stanislavski (1863-1938) and, after him, Mejerchol’d
(1874-1940) who carried through the reform of Russian theatre; the English
Poel (1852-1934) and Granville Barker (1877-1956); Craig (1872-1966)
who, from London, preached the creative and central function of the director
5
Ibid., p. 15.
See Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearian Stage 1574-1642, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), p. 210.
7
Alonge goes into detail describing the staging of Chatterton by Vigny at pp. 21-30.
113
6
to whom the actor was supposed to be submitted; and the Swiss Appia
(1862-1928) who experimented with his conception of scenic space. To
these we can add the French Copeau (1879-1949) and Jouvet (1887-1951),
and the Austrian Reinhardt (1873-1943). Quite rightly, Schino entitles a
paragraph of chapter 1 of her book ‘Tanti inizi’ (‘Many beginnings’). 8 It
would be impossible in this context to go into the details of their work, but I
can refer to the already mentioned books by Alonge and Schino, along with
others, like Umberto Artioli’s Il teatro di regia and Roberto Tessari’s
Teatro e avanguardie storiche: traiettorie dell’eresia.9 Thanks to their
creativity, these directors conceived innovative ideas about theatre, looked
at each other’s works, read what the others had written and, some of them,
met to discuss and exchange views. Schino gives us a very useful list of
what the first directors achieved, which I will merely summarize. Probably
the most important achievement was that of transforming the staging into
‘un’opera d’arte unitaria’ (‘a unified artwork’) which, consequently, needed
a figure charged with the responsibility for harmonising its various aspects.
Fundamental was also the suppression of the predominance of the actor on
the stage, in a kind of theatre where acting was just one of the elements of
the staging.10 As a consequence, the actor no longer spoke his lines at the
front of the stage, looking at the audience, opening his arms as if to draw the
audience to him, but was positioned in other parts of the stage, or asked to
act with his back to the audience, as D’Annunzio had required Duse to do.
Depriving the human being of his centrality meant focusing the attention on
other aspects like the stage setting. Therefore, the painted cloths used
throughout the nineteenth century were replaced by architectural props, like
Craig’s screens – tall rectangular panels – for his Hamlet staged at
Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre in 1912.
8
Schino, La nascita della regia teatrale, p. 3.
Artioli, Il teatro di regia: genesi ed evoluzione (1870-1950); Roberto Tessari, Teatro e
avanguardie storiche: traiettorie dell’eresia (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2005).
10
Schino, La nascita della regia teatrale, pp. XIX-XX.
114
9
Figure 8: Gordon Craig's screens for Hamlet
From being just the container of the action, the set acquired a role,
and contributed to the action itself by making the actors’ movements easier,
for example, or hindering them. The first act of Hamlet started with the
screens in movement, and the action only began when the movement was
stopped. The tall screens represented the battlements of the castle, the
perfect place to be inhabited by ghosts and apparitions, but they also
acquired a symbolic role, representing vast and inexorable forces of fate,
much bigger than the characters. In fact, in comparison to the huge panels,
actors seemed very small, and moved among them as if along a narrow lane
or a dark corridor. Their movements and gestures were non-naturalistic and
reduced to the minimum, while the scenery became part of the meaning of
the play and the interpretation of the text, rather than just a local setting.11
Things developed much more slowly in Italy, where old habits still
existed in the first half of the twentieth century: little rehearsal time (one or
two weeks), actors still used to having a prompter, no reading of the whole
text before rehearsal, very simple stage design, the same costumes for
different productions.12 Directors Luchino Visconti (1906-1976), Orazio
Costa (1911-1999), Luigi Squarzina (1922-2010), and Strehler (1921-1997),
above all, started to experiment with directing in the 1940s. By that time
artists like Reinhardt, Copeau and Jouvet had already gone a long way in
11
A detailed description of this Hamlet can be found in Schino, La nascita della regia
teatrale, pp. 7-11.
12
It is remarkable that theatre practices in the Italy of the first half of the twentieth century
were similar to those in use in sixteenth-century England.
115
theatre development. The debate over the necessity to reform theatre and to
introduce the figure of the director developed around 1920. The protagonists
of the debate were: theatre critic and journalist Silvio D’Amico (1887-1955)
who fought the battle against the predominance of the star actor in the pages
of his book Tramonto del grande attore published in 1929; dramatist,
novelist and short story writer Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) who, in the
period 1925-1928, founded the Teatro d’Arte in Rome; and Anton Giulio
Bragaglia (1890-1960), a versatile and intellectual artist who founded his
Teatro degli Indipendenti in 1922. The name regista (director) was only
introduced in 1932 by the philologist Bruno Migliorini (1896-1975) and, at
the Convegno Volta (Volta Conference) of 1934, the discussion still
revolved around the necessity of setting up a director’s theatre.13 Directing
in Italy was conceived primarily as an instrument to reaffirm the central role
of the author in opposition to the supremacy of the actor. The figure of the
director, therefore, was seen as someone who should guarantee that the
playtexts were not modified during the staging, and that the author’s will
was respected.
D’Amico and Pirandello were the most strenuous advocates of this
idea. They never shared the ideas of directing as it was conceived in other
European countries, and were not willing to acknowledge the role of the
director as a creator of the play. During the 1934 Convegno Volta the former
made a plea, affirming the necessity of training a new generation of actors
and directors, to which the Fascist regime responded by setting up the
Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica (National Academy of Dramatic
Art) in 1934. Meanwhile with Bragaglia we can speak of the teatro teatrale
(theatrical theatre) or pure theatre, that replaced the supremacy of the author
(and of the actor) with a figure who would exalt the spectacular aspects of
theatre. He took inspiration from the European experimentations and from
13
The Convegni Volta were organized by the Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the
Lynx-Eyed), founded in 1603 by Federico Cesi. It was the first academy of sciences to
persist in Italy. It was revived in the 1870s to become the national academy of Italy,
encompassing both literature and science among its concerns. Eight Convegni Volta were
organized between 1931 and 1938, and they covered various fields.
116
the past and, following Antoine’s ideas, employed amateur actors to be
shaped according to the director’s ideas.14 Between 1946 and 1947 the
debate was carried on in the pages of the magazine Sipario (Curtain), from
which three directorial trends were outlined: the regia di orchestrazione
stilistica (directing of stylistic orchestration), the regia a spettacolo unico
(directing of unified spectacle), and the regia critica (critical directing).
Directing of stylistic orchestration was the kind of directing that developed
just after the war. Those who followed this trend were the custodians of the
text who wanted to show the essence of the text and were not willing to
consider the staging as an autonomous form of art.15 The followers of the
second trend had very precise ideas about the staging that remained the
same for different texts. They were mainly interested in expressing
themselves, and therefore they extended the director’s role granting him also
dramaturgical functions. To the ‘sacredness’ of the text, they opposed the
‘sacredness’ of the staging.16 Critical directing was a kind of middle way
between the first two. Therefore, the directors whose directing can be
defined as critical aimed at stagings that would preserve the integrity of the
text which, however, needed to be re-narrated by the director through his
creativity. Strehler can be defined as a critical director.
3.2 The Foundation of the Piccolo Teatro della Citta’ di
Milano
The following article appeared in Corriere della Sera, the most
influential Italian newspaper, on 26 January 1947:
La Giunta municipale, in una delle sue ultime riunioni, ha approvato
la trasformazione dell’ex-cinema Broletto in teatro, che sarà
14
Artioli, Il teatro di regia, pp. 175-179.
Meldolesi, Fondamenti del teatro italiano, p. 150.
16
Ibid.
117
15
municipalizzato, ossia gestito direttamente dal Comune, e prenderà il
nome di ‘Piccolo teatro della Città di Milano’. Secondo le
dichiarazioni fatte dall’assessore Jori, il nuovo teatro si aprirà
probabilmente verso la metà di aprile (…) con una stagione di prosa,
alla
quale
potranno
anche
essere
intercalate
manifestazioni
concertistiche di particolare rilievo. Una commissione, composta di
uomini di teatro e di lettere, sta già studiando il repertorio che si adatti
al palcoscenico e alla sala e la formazione della Compagnia che verrà
appositamente costituita.17
In one of its most recent meetings, the city council has approved the
transformation of the former cinema Broletto into a theatre, which will
be municipalized, that is run directly by the municipality, and will be
called ‘Piccolo teatro della Città di Milano’. According to councillor
Jori, the new theatre will probably open around mid-April (…) with a
theatrical season, which will alternate with concerts of particular
relevance. A committee, comprising men of the theatre and men of
letters, is already working on a suitable repertoire for the stage and for
the auditorium, and on the shaping of a Company that will be set up
for that purpose.
The Piccolo Teatro della Città di Milano, the first civic public theatre
in Italy, opened on 14 May 1947 with the première of L’albergo dei poveri
(The Lower Depths) by Maxim Gorky and was followed by other municipal,
publically funded theatres in various parts of the country.
Forty years later Strehler, one of the two founders (the other one being
Paolo Grassi), recounted the story of the Piccolo Teatro in these words:
The first ten years at the Piccolo Teatro were ten years of theatrical
madness. In ten years we chose, rehearsed and mounted nearly eighty
plays. We put them on in our small theatre in Milan, in the open air, in
17
Magda Poli, Milano in Piccolo: il Piccolo Teatro nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera
(Milano: Rizzoli, 2007), p. 16.
118
squares, churches, celebrated theatre throughout Italy and all over
Europe … it was hard work but exhilarating. Our theatre was from the
start a poor theatre and it has remained a poor theatre. Initially we had
a first-rate group of actors and technicians who decided to stay
together. But eventually one of them – or a group – would leave and
others would take their place. The history of the Piccolo is that of four
or five companies which have constantly alternated, changed,
amalgamated; plus those few individuals who have stayed with the
theatre for twenty or thirty years. The Piccolo started with a group of
friends and has developed into a communal theatre in which the
personal relationships are all-important, most of all the strong and
enduring friendship between myself and Paolo.18
Today the Piccolo Teatro di Milano has three auditoria: Teatro Grassi
founded in 1947, Teatro Studio, the experimental auditorium opened in
1987, and the new site called Teatro Strehler, inaugurated in 1998 after
Strehler’s death. Sergio Escobar is currently the manager of the theatre, and
Luca Ronconi is the artistic director.
Writing about the Piccolo Teatro in this work is relevant for at least
three reasons: firstly because the theatre was the first civic theatre in Italy
subsidized by the State; secondly because Giorgio Strehler was the first
influential theatre director in the country; thirdly because his contribution to
the understanding of Shakespeare’s plays in Italy is fundamental.
The foundation of the theatre is a fascinating story, and its importance
can only be fully understood in the context of the social, political and
cultural situation of Milan at the end of World War Two. The city, which
had been a base for Partisan Resistance in the North during the war, became
the centre of a cultural re-birth which went along with the reconstruction of
the town. The fight against Fascism resulted in the desire to re-build Milan
economically and culturally through a political process of democratization
of the institutions, with the reforming task of the intellectuals and artists
18
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 1.
119
integrated into this process. Writers, philosophers, critics, painters who
during the war, together with workers and the wider populace, had fought
against fascism, gathered in the town, and all contributed to animate a
flourishing cultural scene. In his book Teoria e realtà del Piccolo Teatro di
Milano, Giorgio Guazzotti writes that the spirit of the democratic fight
against Fascism, undertaken by citizens belonging to all social classes, was
very much alive after the war, and permeated the electoral institutions of the
public administration.19 In a town that had to start anew, the role of culture
was recognized as fundamental in building a democratic society, but also
fundamental was considered the democratization of culture and the
spreading of education.
In this context Strehler and Grassi realized what their role should be,
and how to effect it; also that the foundation of a new theatre should serve
the same process of democratization of society. ‘Il teatro è un pubblico
servizio’,20 (‘theatre is a public service’) wrote Grassi in the paper Avanti on
25 April 1946, spreading the idea of theatre that the two men had in mind;
the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary for the word ‘service’ reads:
‘a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or
utilities such as electricity and water’.21 Theatre was as important for Grassi,
and it was its social function that interested him. His aim was that of
reaching wide sections of the population in order to educate them through
theatre and, in this, Guazzotti finds the reason why Grassi and Strehler did
not choose an extreme position, or propose an experimental repertoire.
Strehler and Grassi started their collaboration in 1946 when they
founded the Diogene group for theatre lovers, who would meet up every
Sunday to read Italian and foreign texts by authors and playwrights who had
been banished by the Fascist regime. Thanks to this group, many people
heard of Chekhov, Strindberg, Wedekind, Majakovski, Büchner, Toller,
19
Giorgio Guazzotti, Teoria e Realtà del Piccolo Teatro di Milano (Torino: Einaudi, 1965),
p. 25.
20
Ibid., p.29.
21
‘service’. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/service [accessed 19 November 2012].
120
Brecht and Kaiser for the first time.22 In this cultural climate the two friends
conceived the idea of a civic public theatre with a permanent company of
actors. In the first half of the twentieth century there were still touring
companies in Italy, or private theatres which, due to economic reasons, were
forced to choose a rather commercial repertoire which would best suit the
audience’s taste, or theatres financed by the Fascist regime (that is publicly
funded), which exercised a strict control over the plays to be staged. The
intentions of Strehler and Grassi for their theatre were clearly stated in an
open letter:
Rifiutiamo gli esperimenti della letteratura pura. Rifiutiamo le
decorazioni della pura scenografia. Rifiutiamo l’avallo gratuito della
moda. Rifiutiamo ogni concessione alla sensualità della folla.
Rifiutiamo le frasi fatte, i luoghi comuni, il conformismo del costume
politico e sociale.23
We refuse the experiments of pure literature. We refuse the decoration
of pure stage design. We refuse the easy endorsement of fashion. We
refuse any concession to the sensuality of the crowd. We refuse
clichés, commonplaces and the conformism of political and social
usage.
They wanted to offer a vast repertoire of Italian and foreign authors,
contemporary and classical plays in order to develop new tastes and form a
new audience. They wanted ‘un teatro d’arte per tutti (…), un teatro dove la
comunità liberamente riunita ascolta una parola da accettare o da respingere’
(‘a theatre of art for everybody (…), a theatre where a community freely
gathered listens to words to be accepted or rejected’).24 It is clear that the
two men wanted to bring about a revolution in Italian theatre: no more
22
Brecht’s ideas of theatre as having a social and political purpose and his theory of the
Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) will influence Strehler significantly, as I will discuss
in depth later on in the chapter.
23
Poli, Milano in Piccolo, pp. 22-23.
24
Ibid., p. 23.
121
bourgeois theatre, no more theatre conceived as a form of entertainment
only, no concession to trends and fashion, no theatre as sheer spectacle, but
as an instrument to educate people, to create community, and to stimulate
diverse opinions. They thought that theatre is the place where an audience
gathers freely, is stimulated and encouraged to think and to accept or reject
ideas. Today, in a country like Italy, where major cuts are being made to
culture and to education, where schools seem to be regarded almost as a
burden to the coffers of the state, where money is taken away from public
institutions to be given to private ones, where theatres are forced to reduce
the number of new productions because the state’s financial support steadily
decreases, it is moving to read what the then mayor of Milan, Antonio
Greppi, who enthusiastically supported the project of these two young men,
said about the foundation of the first civic public theatre in Italy. He felt that
the new theatre should illuminate cosciences, improve customs, give new
life and safeguard the universal values of culture and art. It should be a
theatre for the people without being demagogically popular, a theatre of
wide remit, a theatre of any time and any place.
Così Milano sarà una volta di più alla testa del movimento di
ricostruzione nazionale, che è, prima di tutto, né potrebbe non essere,
un movimento di coscienze e di valori spirituali.25
So Milan will be once more at the head of the movement of national
reconstruction which is, first of all, and it could not be otherwise, a
movement of conscience and spiritual values.
Greppi was also well aware that such a plan would not be fulfilled without
the financial backing of public institutions.
Before introducing the two men at the heart of this theatrical
revolution, it is interesting to compare what happened in Milan at the end of
the war with the situation of theatre in Britain during the war, when, for the
first time, the government introduced state subsidies to arts through the
25
Ibid., p. 28.
122
financial support of CEMA (Council for Encouragement of Music and the
Arts), established in January 1940.26 CEMA’s function in the Second World
War can be compared to that of ENSA (Entertainments National Services
Association) in the First. Both organizations provided entertainment for the
troops at war but, at the same time, their objective differed drastically:
whereas ENSA provided light entertainment aiming at uplifting the troops’
morale, CEMA wanted to offer high art, which would make people think,
and create ‘permanent, educated audiences all over the country’.27
Moreover, CEMA did not intend to stop its function at the end of the war,
but to continue it, and to foster permanent State financial support to the arts
and the foundation of municipal theatres all over Britain. Its most important
undertaking during the war was the opening of the first state theatre in
British history, the Theatre Royal, Bristol. The reasons that led the members
of CEMA to encourage public financial backing to culture in Britain, and
Strehler and Grassi to set up the Piccolo Teatro in Italy, were similar: in
both cases, there was the need to spread education through art and to offer
high art not only to a few privileged groups, but to a wide audience
composed of all social classes. But in Britain there was another element
which played a fundamental role in the decision to grant money to theatres
and theatre companies: as Heinrich puts it, during the Second World War,
‘Britain seemed to be fighting for its cultural heritage’,28 and drama was
seen as the symbol or manifestation of this heritage. It is clear that, more
than any other author, Shakespeare – ‘the national poet’ – was the emblem
of Britain’s national heritage. Supporting theatre and staging Shakespeare’s
plays (together with other classics), therefore, became a political issue, a
26
A detailed acount of the state intervention in the arts in Britain during the Second World
War can be found in Anselm Heinrich, Theatre in Britain during the Second World War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
27
Quoted in Heinrich, Theatre in Britain during the Second World War, p. 63. Strehler and
Grassi’s wish for a ‘theatre of art for everybody’ is very much in line with the objectives of
the members of CEMA.
28
Ibid., p. 62.
123
contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. 29 Many stars perfomed
Shakespearian characters at the Old Vic which, during the war, played the
role of a National Theatre. CEMA met the expenses and also secured the
presence of Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson as artistic directors of
the theatre, making it possible to call them back from the front. The effects
of the role played by CEMA during the war were lasting: in 1949
Parliament decided to spend £1 million to build a National Theatre. 30 At the
end of his article, Heinrich – quoting Olivier – speaks of a ‘rebirth of the
theatre’31 in Britain during the war, which was ‘closely linked to the war
and to a change in official and public attitude towards the function of theatre
in society’.32 As for the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, it can be
said that it was closely linked to the situation of post-war, post-fascist Milan
and to a change in the attitude towards the function of theatre from being
pure entertainment to becoming an instrument to educate people. Although I
am not aware of direct links between the founders of the Piccolo Teatro in
Italy and the protagonists of the theatre developments in Britain, in both
countries theatre acquired a social function and came to be regarded as a
social service, and in both cases it mirrored the political situation of the two
countries, of Britain during the war and of Italy just after it.
Going back to the ‘Italian stage’, I wish to spend a few words on the
background of the protagonists of this theatrical revolution. Strehler and
Grassi were very different, but complementary. Strehler was the artist,
Grassi was the manager. Grassi had also been a director, but he soon
29
In this context it is worth mentioning Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film adaptation of Henry V
that was intended as a morale booster for Britain and, for this reason, it was partly funded
by the government.
30
After the war the south bank of the Thames was chosen as the site for the proposed
national theatre, and in 1951 building started. Then in 1962 a National Theatre company
was finally established, with Sir Laurence Olivier as director. The Old Vic company
provided the nucleus of actors, and the National Theatre took temporary residence at the
Old Vic theatre, opening on October 22, 1963, with a production of Hamlet. A mixed
repertoire of classic and modern productions directed by distinguished English and foreign
directors rapidly brought the National Theatre to prominence in world drama. In February
1976 the National Theatre gave its final performance at the Old Vic theatre and later that
year moved to its new home along the Thames. From 2003 the company has been directed
by Sir Nicholas Hytner.
31
Heinrich, Theatre in Britain during the Second World War, p. 67.
32
Ibid.
124
realized that that was not the right path for him. So, he invented a new
figure: l’operatore culturale (the cultural operator). Both were fervent
socialists.
Strehler was born in Barcola – a village near Trieste – on 14 August
1921. His father died when he was only two years old, his mother was a
highly regarded violinist. When he was a child they moved to Milan where,
after primary school, he studied at Liceo Parini (a renowned State grammar
school), and then read Law at university. However, he had loved theatre
since he was an adolescent and attended Milan’s Accademia dei
Filodrammatici (Drama Academy). He started his career in theatre as an
actor but, already at the age of twenty-two, it was directing that attracted
him. Before the war he and Grassi had already become friends. During the
war he was a refugee in Switzerland where – under the name of Georges
Firmy (his French grandmother’s surname) – he directed three plays
between 1942 and 1945: Assassinio nella cattedrale (Murder in the
Cathedral) by T. S. Eliot, Caligola (Caligula) by Albert Camus and Piccola
Città (Our Town) by Thornton Wilder. He returned to Italy after the war
where he started to work as a director and theatre critic. However his dream
– which he shared with Grassi – was that of renewing Italian theatre and of
setting up the first civic public theatre in Milan. They fulfilled their dream
in 1947.
Grassi was born on 30 October 1919 in Puglia. As an adolescent he
was already keen on theatre. Like Strehler he attended Milan’s Liceo Parini
and, at the age of eighteen, he was already co-editor of the cultural pages of
the Milanese newspaper Il Sole. In 1937 he also started to work as a theatre
director. He continued his career as a critic and was also an essayist and
‘operatore teatrale’ (‘theatre impresario’). In 1940 he set up a theatre
company; one year later he founded the avant-garde group Palcoscenico
(Stage), to which actors like Strehler and Franco Parenti belonged. With this
group he put on stage plays by contemporary playwrights like Pirandello,
O’Neill and Chekhov aiming at a radical change in playwriting. During the
war he was called up; he was a member of the Partisan Resistance. From the
Liberation to March 1947 he was in charge of the theatre criticism section of
125
the paper Avanti. It was in this period that he developed the idea of creating
a publically funded civic theatre.
How Strehler and Grassi chose the theatre is a remarkable story.
One day they visited the former cinema Broletto which, during the war, had
been used as a prison by a fascist regiment. What later became the dressing
rooms of the theatre had been cells where the Fascists imprisoned and
tortured Partisans. At the end of the war the space was taken over by the
Allied Forces. The story goes that on that first visit Grassi asked Strehler:
‘Giorgio, te la senti di fare con me un teatro stabile qui dentro?’33 (‘Well,
Giorgio, do you think we can turn this place into a home for a resident
theatre company?’)34. Strehler remained there alone for a few hours, and
finally decided to embark on this adventure.
Not everybody shared the idea that a new theatre was necessary at a
time when Milan had much more serious problems. In an article which
appeared in the newspaper Corriere d’Informazione of 11-12 April 1947, a
journalist illustrated the situation clearly: the cost of living and
unemployment kept increasing, public services were getting more and more
expensive, there were still many homeless, salaries were too low.35 But this
did not stop Strehler and Grassi, who – as I wrote before – would argue that
culture and the cultural education of people were as important as other
public services. To achieve their aims the two men wanted to create a new
kind of theatre independent of any political pressure. Their theatre should no
longer suit the tastes of that section of the audience who saw it just as a
form of entertainment and a place to see and be seen and, at the same time,
they did not want a theatre for the initiated. In the open letter which they
wrote to present their theatre to the Milanese citizens they stated:
(…) recluteremo i nostri spettatori, per quanto più è possibile, tra i
lavoratori e tra i giovani, nelle officine, negli uffici, nelle scuole,
33
Strehler, Io, Strehler: una vita per il teatro. Conversazioni con Ugo Ronfani (Milano:
Rusconi, 1986), p. 40.
34
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 6.
35
Paraphrased from Poli, Milano in Piccolo, p. 21. The name of the journalist is not
mentioned.
126
offrendo semplici e convenienti forme d’abbonamento per meglio
saldare i rapporti tra teatro e spettatori, offrendo comunque spettacoli
di alto livello artistico a prezzi quanto più è possibile ridotti. Non
dunque teatro sperimentale e nemmeno teatro d’eccezione, chiuso in
una cerchia di iniziati. Ma, invece, teatro d’arte, per tutti.36
(…) we will recruit our audience, as much as possible, among workers
and young people, in workshops, offices, schools. We will offer
simple and cheap forms of subscription in order to bring together
theatre and audience, offering shows of high artistic level as cheaply
as possible. No experimental theatre and no exceptional theatre for a
group of the initiated. But, instead, a theatre of art for everybody.
To comply with the idea of shaping an audience and of reaching
large strata of the population, the repertoire of the first seasons was rather
eclectic. It may seem odd that the first play was not Italian, but the choice of
L’albergo dei poveri (The Lower Depths) certainly had a political
connotation in line with Strehler and Grassi’s socialist ideas and with their
wish to educate through theatre. Beside Gorky’s play, three other plays were
staged, all directed by Strehler. But, the following year, Strehler gave
opportunities to other directors like Orazio Costa, Guido Salvini, Mario
Landi, Gerardo Guerrieri, a choice made to comply with the idea of
organizing the theatre democratically rather than as a hierarchy. However, at
the end of the first season, Grassi and Strehler realized that there was no real
collaboration among these directors, which prevented the establishment of
an organic repertoire. As a consequence, from the second season, the choice
of the dramaturgical line was entrusted to Strehler who, effectively,
assumed the role of artistic director of the theatre. It would be too long and
only marginally related to the aims of my work to explore in detail the
choices made by Strehler for the definition of the repertoire of the Piccolo
36
Ibid., p. 29.
127
Teatro,37 but it is interesting to identify the lines that were at the bottom of
these choices. Hirst points out that Strehler had some strong ideas
concerning the choice of the programme which were ‘distinguished by his
need to discover poetry in the theatrical medium, his keen social sense and
the consciousness that the company was helping to mould and influence a
new Italian society’.38 And, according to Guazzotti, the investigation of man
in history and man in society was Strehler’s main interest, which he
explored working both on contemporary and classical authors.39 As to the
classics, it was their contemporaneity, their impact on the present that
interested him. Therefore, it is in this light that we should read his
productions of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare, in particular with his
history dramas, also complied with Strehler’s desire to investigate the
individual in history, and with his wish to deal with teatro di poesia
(poetical theatre). Goldoni, who frequently recurred in the Piccolo’s
productions, gave Strehler the chance of observing the individual in society:
in particular in the Trilogia della villeggiatura (Holiday Trilogy) he could
picture the crisis of Italian society in the eighteenth century. The
investigation of theatre itself was certainly another of Strehler’s main
interests, which led him to direct Goldoni’s Arlecchino servitore di due
padroni (Servant of Two Masters), with his characters from commedia
dell’arte, and to choose plays by Shakespeare known for their metatheatrical
quality, most of all, The Tempest. Strehler’s interest in metatheatre might
seem at odds with his concern with social issues and with the idea of theatre
as an instrument to interpret society and man in relation to it. But I do not
think it is. Strehler was a tireless director who considered theatre as his life
mission, as ‘moral responsibility’ towards the community. 40 So, it is within
this frame that I think we should consider his investigation of theatre: not
only was he interested in using theatre to fulfil what he believed was his role
37
See Guazzotti, Teoria e realtà del Piccolo Teatro di Milano and also Hirst, Giorgio
Strehler.
38
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 11.
39
Guazzotti, Teoria e realtà del Piccolo Teatro di Milano, p. 85.
40
Strehler, Io, Strehler, p. 63.
128
in society. He also wanted to understand and explore the means that he used
to achieve his goal.
3.3 Strehler, the Director
In this section of the chapter I wish to reflect upon Strehler as a
theatre director with a focus on his idea of the director as an interpreter of
the text. I will also look at the work of the European directors who
influenced Strehler and helped him develop his own directing method.
After the generation of the Great Actors and of the mattatori,
Strehler claimed the pre-eminence of the written text, which should be the
focus of the director’s staging. He spoke of ‘critical directing’ and ‘creative
directing’: critical, as it implied researching and analysing the text; creative,
as it meant listening to the sensations which it conveyed.41 In his approach
to the text, the director should combine rationality and sensitivity, acting as
a supervisor, an intellectual capable of thinking on the one hand, and of
creating art on the other, who, through his stagings, would infuse the
audience with the same capabilities and would arouse critical thinking and
feeling at the same time.42 The idea of the, so to speak, born actor who is
simply born with a natural talent, and therefore knows instinctively how to
perform a role, was superseded by the idea that the actor needs to be
directed by a figure who is at the service of the text. Strehler’s productions
were acclaimed for their aesthetic value, but they were also a source of
illumination of the text, and can be considered as pieces of theatrical
criticism combined with theatrical inspiration.
A closer look at his method of work, from the choice of the text to
the mise-en-scène, helps understand all this. First of all he studied the text
(in the original language and in the available translations) and the author,
trying to understand them in relationship to their time and then comparing
41
42
Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 24.
129
them with his time. He read critical works, and met with the stage designer,
the costumist, and the musical director for a preliminary plan of the staging.
Only after these months of study did he gather the actors, to whom he
explained all his findings, his interpretation of the text, his insights into the
story and the characters, and his ideas about all the components that
contribute to the realization of a staging. At the same time he read aloud the
whole play for the actors, taking the various roles, showing the characters’
personality, their tone of voice, sometimes their gestures or movements and
listening to the actors’ comments.
Giulia Lazzarini, the actress who played the role of Ariel in the 1978
production of La Tempesta (along with many other roles in productions by
Strehler), explains Strehler’s readings with the actors very clearly in the
interview which she granted to me on 25 May 2011. For reasons of clarity
and fluency I will not quote my questions.
Strehler faceva le letture. Prima studiava lui, poi faceva la lettura e tu
già capivi cosa lui voleva che fosse; ti metteva dentro quel mondo.
Leggeva lui prima tutto ad alta voce. (…) Mentre leggeva spiegava il
rapporto che doveva esserci tra i personaggi. Leggeva e spiegava e tu
capivi (…) il tuo rapporto con gli altri, il tuo rapporto con il testo, il
significato che il testo doveva avere e quindi era meraviglioso e (…)
non è che tu diventavi un clone, non eri un imitatore di un tono ma eri
… la motivazione di quel tono era così chiara che tu facevi tua la
motivazione di quel modo, di quella battuta detta in quel modo. (…)
Se io e lei [riferito a me] ora leggiamo un testo, decidiamo di fare una
cosa, se la leggiamo già facendo io un ruolo e lei l’altro, lei pensa al
suo ruolo, io penso al mio; non li mettiamo insieme. (…) Lui leggeva
già dando appunto queste motivazioni, (…) creava i rapporti, le
relazioni, cosa difficilissima a teatro adesso, trovare i giusti rapporti
perché trovi magari un attore bravo, l’altro bravo però (…) non si
ascoltano, non legano; l’importante non è dir bene una battuta, è
capire quello che si dice in funzione dell’altro. (…) E poi, aveva il
desiderio pazzesco, più che in altri testi, di metterlo in scena, di
130
vederlo [si riferisce a La Tempesta], quindi siamo andati abbastanza
presto in palcoscenico. (… ) La lettura durava giorni. (…) Siamo
andati in scena perché lui voleva vedere subito le sue luci (…) perché
senza la luce giusta (…) difficile che tu riesca a creare, a concentrarti
(…) e lui doveva vedere, appunto, o una luce di tempesta, o una luce
… .43
Strehler did the readings. First he studied, then he did the reading and
you already understood what he wanted it to be; he led you into that
world. It was he who read it all aloud before. While he was reading,
he explained the relationship that should exist among the characters.
He read and explained and you understood (…) your relationship with
the others, your relationship with the text, the meaning that the text
should have, and so it was wonderful and you did not become a clone,
you were not the imitator of a tone, but you were … the motivation of
that tone was so clear that you made the motivation of that way yours,
of that line spoken in that way. (…) If you [referred to me] and I now
read a text, we decide to do something, if we read it with you taking a
role and I another, you focus on your role, I focus on mine; we don’t
put them together. (…) He read giving these motivations, (…) he
created relations, which is very difficult in theatre now, finding the
right relationships, because you find a good actor, another good one
(…) but they don’t listen to each other, they don’t connect; it is not
important to speak a line well, it is important what you say in function
of the other. (…) And then, more than for other texts, he had the wish
to put it on stage, to see it [she refers to La Tempesta], so we went
quite early on stage. (…) The reading lasted days. (…) We went on
stage because he wanted to see the lights immediately (…) because,
43
At this point Ms Lazzarini moved on to talking about the character of Ariel. I will quote
this section of the interview in my analysis of Strehler’s staging of La Tempesta.
131
without the right light, (…) it is difficult to create, to concentrate (…)
and he wanted to see, the light of the tempest or a light … .
The reading with the actors was another moment of investigation for
the director, as his pre-conceived ideas started to take shape thanks to their
presence. After this phase, a long period of rehearsals started (usually about
two months), during which nothing was fixed, much still changed, the
music, the stage set, the costumes because even rehearsals were a phase of
exploration and of interpretation for Strehler. We understand that the
director was the dominant figure and that if on the one hand the months of
research and thinking were the proof of a very serious commitment to his
role, on the other they also placed Strehler as a director in an extremely
authoritative position.
As I pointed out before, in the first seasons Strehler’s choice of plays
was rather heterogeneous and his ‘readings’ of the texts less meticulous than
a few years later. He was still experimenting and exploring, trying to work
out the best repertoire for the audience he wanted to form. In later years,
instead, the number of plays was reduced substantially, to which
corresponded a more detailed analysis of the texts, longer rehearsal periods
(seventy days for his Galileo in 1963 as opposed to just two or three weeks
for the first productions), and productions which lasted months. More than
once Strehler resumed texts and reworked them, thus reviving previously
staged shows, as he was aware of the ephemeral, ever-changing quality of
theatre in comparison to other forms of art and, secondly, to find new
meanings and to re-interpret the texts for another generation of actors and
public. Every re-staging, therefore, was a further reflection on a previous
theme, which confirmed his wish to be seen as an interpreter and
intermediary between the text and the audience. Strehler staged plays by a
high number of playwrights – Sophocles, Ibsen, Molière, Eliot, Büchner
(not to mention the staging of operas by Strauss, Verdi, Donizetti,
Malipiero, Massente), but his favourites were the already mentioned
132
Goldoni and Shakespeare, along with Brecht.44 Arlecchino, servitore di due
padroni by Goldoni, which closed the first season of Piccolo Teatro, has
been performed every single year since then and even after Strehler’s death
in 1997. The actor playing the title role changed in 1963 when Marcello
Moretti was replaced by Ferruccio Soleri. At the age of 82, Soleri is still
playing the role of Arlecchino.45
In his book Io, Strehler: una vita per il teatro. Conversazioni con
Ugo Ronfani, Strehler defined his generation as ‘la generazione senza
maestri’46 (‘a generation without teachers’), meaning that they knew very
little of the development of European trends of directing. But, when he
started to work, he began to look outside Italy in order to develop his own
way of directing. Three men contributed significantly to shape his concept
of the role of a director: Coupeau, Jouvet and Brecht. In his conversations
with Ronfani, Strehler explains what these three men taught him: like
Coupeau, Strehler thought that theatre, even comic theatre, should always
strive for order, honesty and truth, and considered the work of a director as a
life-committing mission. He stated:
Credo che a Copeau io devo, intanto la visione austera, morale, quasi
giansenista del teatro. Il teatro come ‘responsabilità morale’ nei
confronti della collettività. Un sentimento dolorosamente religioso
della teatralità.47
First of all I think I owe to Coupeau an austere, moral, almost
Jansenist vision of theatre. Theatre as ‘moral responsibility’ towards
the community. A painfully religious feeling of theatre.
He admired the French director for his wish to fight against the
dominance of the star actors and for his battle to find an acting method at
44
The quotation given at the beginning of the section ‘Strehler’s First Productions of
Shakespeare Plays’ explains what Shakespeare represented for Strehler and why he staged
more plays by Shakespeare than by any other playwright.
45
Soleri was born in 1929.
46
Io, Strehler, p. 105.
47
Io, Strehler, p. 63.
133
the service of the text. From him he also learnt what he defines as l’unità del
teatro’ (the ‘unity of theatre’), unity of play text and staging, unity of
authors, actors, stage designers, musicians and technicians.48 Jouvet too
taught Strehler to consider theatre as a service offered to the collective, and
the actor and the director as intruments of poetry. From him he also learnt
that working in theatre is a daily job not an ‘arte divina’ (‘divine art’)49 and
that directing is not only a philological, cultural or technical undertaking but
also an ‘abbandono intuitivo’50 (‘intuitive acceptance’) of its poetic values.
Brecht’s lesson was probably the most important for Strehler and is
in line with that of Coupeau and Jouvet. The two men met during rehearsals
of Strehler’s staging of L’opera da tre soldi (The Threepenny Opera)
premièred on 10 February 1956 just a few months before the German
playwright and director died. The idea of what Strehler calls ‘teatro
umano’51 (‘theatre of humanity’) was further developed through Brecht’s
influence. Brecht taught him a conception of theatre that helped men to be
better, and ‘la dignità di lavorare nella società e per la società, dentro la
storia e i problemi del mio tempo’52 (‘the dignity of working inside society
and for society, inside history and the problems of my time’). Brecht also
had an influence on Strehler’s development of a new acting method, one of
the tasks of Strehler and Grassi when they established the Piccolo Teatro.
According to Strehler, Italian actors have a more highly developed intuitive
sense,53 and are therefore more capable of improvising than other European
actors like the French, but they certainly lacked a method at the end of the
Second World War. Some drama schools had already been set up, like Luigi
Rasi’s Regia Scuola (Royal School), which opened in Florence in 1882,
Edoardo Boutet’s school, or the already-mentioned Accademia Nazionale
d’Arte Drammatica (National Academy of Dramatic Art) founded by Silvio
48
Ibid., p. 64
Ibid., p. 63.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid., p. 66.
52
Ibid.
53
I suppose this is due to the tradition of the commedia dell’arte in Italy that had trained
actors to improvise. Something of that acting method has probably remained in the
approach to acting of Italian actors.
134
49
D’Amico in 1934. Yet a common pedagogy was still missing in Italy when,
in other European countries like Germany, a debate on the issue of drama
schools was already going on towards the mid-nineteenth century. The
method that Strehler developed was mainly based on Stanislavski’s and
Brecht’s ideas: identifying with the character on the one hand; distancing
from the character – the so-called Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) –
on the other. It should always be a middle way between getting into and out
of the character; in Strehler’s words: ‘a game of internal versus external
reactions, of participation and distancing, of absence and presence’ 54 with a
double effect on the audience: empathising with the character and the story
but also being aware that theatre is not reality. According to Brecht only
through detachment of the actors and, as a consequence, of the audience,
can theatre stimulate critical judgement. Strehler agreed, and staged
L’Opera da tre soldi (The Threepenny Opera) according to Brecht’s ideas
and, at the same time, he was continuously searching for beauty and poetic
perfection.
3.4 Strehler’s First Productions of Shakespeare’s Plays
Strehler staged more plays by Shakespeare than by any other
playwright.55 Most writings on Strehler’s Shakespeare start with the
following words by the Italian director:
Credo veramente che Shakespeare, appena appena lo si avvicini con
una media disponibilità di cuore, richieda a noi un assoluto impegno,
54
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 32.
La Tempesta (1948); Riccardo II (1949); La bisbetica domata (1950); Riccardo III
(1951); Re Enrico IV (1951); La dodicesima notte (1951); Macbeth (1952); Giulio Cesare
(1953); Coriolano (1957); Il gioco dei potenti (an adaptation of 1,2,3 Henry VI – 1965); Re
Lear (1972); Some of the plays were revived more than once. Most important of all was the
second version of La Tempesta directed in 1978 which, together with Re Lear, ranks among
the finest of his productions of a Shakespeare play. In 1948 the Piccolo Teatro produced
Romeo e Giulietta directed by Renato Simoni with Strehler as assistant. Strehler also
directed two operas by Verdi at Milan La Scala: Macbeth (1975); Falstaff (1980).
135
55
una ricerca di verità molto fonda, di rapporti molto densi, domandi
una meditazione totale sul mondo e sulle cose, estremamente ricca e
sempre coinvolgente. E che in questo senso Shakespeare diventi anche
una specie di spartiacque tra chi sul teatro gioca e chi al teatro crede
invece come a una forma insostituibile di Verità e Poesia.56
I firmly believe that Shakespeare, if you approach him with an
average disposition of the heart, demands total commitment, a very
profound search for the truth, for very dense relations; he demands an
all-encompassing, extremely rich and always involving meditation on
the world and on things. And that in this way Shakespeare also
becomes a sort of watershed between those who play with theatre and
those who believe in theatre as an irreplaceable form of Truth and
Poetry.
As I wrote before, in the first seasons Strehler varied a lot and
experimented with several playwrights and texts in order to test the
audience’s response and, at the same time, to mould a new and more
numerous audience. This applies to his stagings of Shakespeare too, as is
clear from the list given in footnote 54. Several comments can be made
about the first Shakespearian productions. In his book Looking at
Shakespeare, Dennis Kennedy argues that Strehler’s ‘initial productions
reflected the uncertain direction of Italian theatre immediately after the
war’.57 As I will make clear with a more detailed analysis of the 1948
production of La Tempesta, Strehler was still searching for the right way of
dealing with Shakespeare’s plays; he was exploring different theatrical
conventions, while a deeper understanding of the text and a more precise
characterization were probably still to come. Hirst, for example, mentions
the ‘sbandieratori’ (‘flag-wavers’), a large vocal chorus, who the director
56
Giorgio Strehler, Shakespeare, Goldoni, Brecht, ed. Giovanni Soresi, 2nd edn (Milano:
Edizioni Piccolo Teatro di Milano-Teatro d’Europa, 2006), p. 20.
57
Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance,
p. 216.
136
introduced in his Henry IV,58 a choice made in order to move away from the
long-standing tradition of the actor’s theatre, where very little relevance was
given to ensemble scenes. The same wish informed his choice of plays, like
the history plays or La Tempesta, for example, as he favoured pieces
showing off the ensemble nature of the company. A third, important element
was that Strehler wanted to widen the rather limited range of Shakespeare’s
plays offered in Italy. This is remarkable if one considers that, even today, it
is rare to see a Coriolanus, a Richard II, or a Richard III, for example.
Choosing these plays may seem to contradict Strehler’s preference for
ensemble scenes, as they all allow a star actor to dominate, but the director
found ways to diminish the weight of the protagonist on the stage and to
give prominence to Shakespeare’s words. For example, already from his
first productions, his use of lighting was rather unconventional: more than
once, and even in much later stagings like in the 1978 La Tempesta, he was
accused of a preference for underlighting. But again that was an intentional
measure to diminish the relevance given to the performance of the lead actor
or actress at a time when the audience still applauded at the end of the most
popular monologues (as they were used to applaud at the end of the most
popular arias in opera).
The 1948 production of La Tempesta was certainly remarkable, and
deserves to be mentioned. Although Strehler, in later years, expressed his
dislike for open-air stagings, he set this play in the wonderful Boboli
gardens in Florence, for the Eleventh Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. 59 This
production was spectacular: the multi-layered stage was built on a fountain
at the centre of a lake known as the Vasca dei cigni (the Swans Pool). The
layers had a highly symbolic significance, the lower levels representing
darkness, ugliness, base actions and characters, the higher standing for light,
beauty, redemption, goodness. Prospero’s cave was at the top of this
structure. The acting space was separated from the audience by a semicircle
of water and, just in front of the stage, magnificent jets of water formed a
58
59
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 64.
The annual opera festival founded in 1933 by conductor Vittorio Gui.
137
kind of curtain which added to the separation. But Strehler did not think
about frogs in the pool! During rehearsals a chorus of frogs was heard; so, in
order to avoid the inconvenience, the pool was electrified. The above
description makes clear that it was more on the setting that Strehler focused
his attention, rather than on the acting and on the exploration of the text.
Probably there was an influence from the spectacular open-air productions
by Reinhardt (in 1933 he directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the
Boboli Gardens), but the set of Strehler’s La Tempesta was even more
lavish and spectacular.60 Also the music – arrangements of Scarlatti by
Fiorenzo Carpi – played a fundamental role in Strehler’s production. This is
how Strehler remembered that production when he was working on the
successive La Tempesta thirty years later:
In quell’equivoco [come definiva le produzioni en plein air] nacque la
Tempesta sempre con poche prove, poca riflessione, molto timore
spazzato via dalla necessità di ‘far andare in scena lo spettacolo’ costi
quel che costi. (…) Magia esteriore, incanti e lazzi dei buffoni, non
profondità e meditazione, non la disperazione inquieta che mi pare
oggi di aver ritrovato, non quegli interrogativi supremi che mi pare
siano chiusi nella Tempesta. Non esisteva, ricordo, Caliban … poco
Ariel … Prospero … aveva poche dimensioni. Ma i due buffoni legati
coraggiosamente al rondò della Commedia dell’Arte, uno napoletano
e l’altro veneto, uno un Pulcinellaccio, e l’altro uno Zanni primitivo,
resistono ancora come fatto critico al vaglio del tempo anche se con
diversi accenti.61
In that compromise [how he defined the en plein air productions], The
Tempest came to life always with few rehearsals, little reflection,
60
For Reinhardt’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream see Gary Jay Williams, Our
Moonlight Revels; A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Theatre, pp. 164-186. For his
production in Florence, Reinhardt ‘used an Italian cast on the terraced levels of the Boboli
Gardens, with the Pitti Palace in the background. He used the Austrian baroque costumes,
torchlight processions, spotlights, and Mendelssohn’ (p. 175).
61
Strehler, Shakespeare, Goldoni Brecht, p. 23.
138
much fear shed by the need to put the show on stage at any cost. (…)
Exterior magic, enchantment, the jests of the fools, no depth or
meditation, not the restless desperation that I seem to have found
today, none of those supreme questions that I think are contained in
the Tempesta. There was, I remember, no Caliban… little Ariel …
Prospero … there was very little dimension.62 But the two fools
courageously linked to the rondo of the Commedia dell’Arte, one
Neapolitan and the other one Venetian, one a Pulcinellaccio
[derogatory for Pulcinella], the other a primitive Zanni [zany], and
still resist the scrutiny of time, even if with different accents.
From the first productions, the reflection upon theatre in its various
forms was fundamental. The emphasis accorded to the roles of Trinculo and
Stephano, depicted as two typical characters of the Italian commedia
dell’arte, was a way to think about and to revive this remarkable theatrical
genre. Even the choice of the play – where the whole story is orchestrated
by Prospero, the magician but also the director of the show, – was
determined by the same wish. Such a spectacular production did not seem to
match the ideals of the founders of the Piccolo Teatro, as it probably granted
more to the visual appreciation than to the understanding of all the
complexities of the text, as Strehler himself affirms in the above quotation.
However, it is to be seen within his process to revolutionize Italian theatre
on the one hand, and to direct plays by Shakespeare that had not been staged
before. And, as Gian Giacomo Colli argues in his article ‘Shakesperare in a
Fountain’, such a play that:
demanded a collective interpretation (…) could only be enabled by a
new kind of theatre and organizational structure. (…) No more a
private, but a public theatre, under the guide of a capable
administrator, attending to the repertory and the development of the
audience, and with a director free to make his dramaturgical choices.
62
It should be noted that Strehler did not mean that the character of Caliban did not exist,
but that he was only superficially characterized.
139
(…) The staging of Shakespeare in Italy was fundamentally changed
and the collective of energies that was the Piccolo Teatro was able to
stage a spectacular Tempesta in only twenty days.63
After this production, Strehler continued to work extensively on
Shakespeare in the 1940s and in the 1950s. In his book Strehler e
Shakespeare, Lombardo notices that Strehler’s main motivation in those
years was political and, therefore, he tended to adapt the plays he chose to
the current Italian and international political situation.64 Lombardo refers, in
particular, to the tension created by the Cold War and, in that context, to the
defeat of the Communist Party (PCI) by the Christian Democracy Party in
the general elections of 1948.65 In the theatre season 1949-1950 Strehler
directed Riccardo III and, in 1952, Macbeth, two gloomy plays, whose
negativity and lack of hope Strehler underlined in his production.66
According to Lombardo, it was with the staging of Coriolanus in 1957, that
Strehler found the perfect correspondence between the motives of the author
and the motives of the interpreter.67 This staging was followed, in 1963, by
Il gioco dei potenti (Power Games) a production that included 1, 2, 3 Henry
VI and that Strehler remembers with the following words: ‘Fu certamente lo
sforzo più grande che io abbia mai fatto come regista. Fu una specie di
delirio nato non so ancora da dove o da come o da quale necessità’. 68 (‘It
was certainly the biggest effort I ever made as a director. It was a kind of
delirium, and I still do not know where it originated from, or how, or from
what necessity’). Strehler’s dialogue with Shakespeare continued, though he
reduced the number of productions, and it was with his successive
63
Colli, ‘Shakespeare in a Fountain: The First Italian Production of The Tempest Directed
by Giorgio Strehler in 1948, pp. 182-183.
64
See Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare.
65
Ibid., p. 27.
66
See Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare; Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare; Hirst, Giorgio
Strehler.
67
Lombardo Strehler e Shakespeare, p. 32. Colli, ‘Shakespeare in a Fountain: The First
Italian Production of The Tempest Directed by Giorgio Strehler in 1948, pp. 182-183.
67
See Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare.
67
Ibid., p. 27.
67
Ibid.
68
Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare, p. 31.
140
directorial enterprises, the staging of Re Lear (1972) and of La Tempesta
(1978), that this dialogue reached its highest moment.69
3.5 Re Lear
I would like to start my analysis of Strehler’s Re Lear quoting his own
words:
Il Lear mi appare sempre più – tra le altre cose – un dramma
generazionale, chiarissimo, in questo senso almeno, in mezzo a un
turbine di profondità forse insondabili. Da una parte pochi
‘sopravvissuti’ come animali preistorici, grevi e tragici nella loro
storicità (…). Dall’altra una muta di ‘ragazzi’ (…), quasi immagine di
una impietosa gioventù di oggi, capelli, visi, modi, anche crudeltà e
incertezza.70
More and more Lear appears to me – among other things – as a
generational drama, very clear in this respect at least, amidst a whirl of
probably immeasurable depths. On the one hand, few ‘survivors’, like
prehistoric animals, heavy and tragic in their historicity (…). On the
other, a pack of ‘youngsters (…), almost the image of today’s
merciless youth, hair, faces, manners, even cruelty and uncertainty.
From this quotation it can be inferred that Strehler considered King
Lear a very complex tragedy. Yet, as a result of long meditation and indepth study, he saw the generation gap as one of its fundamental themes. He
saw a shift from an old world, inhabited by Lear, Gloucester and Kent, to a
new one, belonging to a power-hungry generation of youths only concerned
69
By this time Peter Brook had directed his revolutionary productions of King Lear (1962)
and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970). I am not aware whether Strehler knew the
second, but he knew Brook’s King Lear. In the next section I will discuss this.
70
Giorgio Strehler, Per un teatro umano: pensieri scritti, parlati e attuati, ed. Sinah
Kessler (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1974), p. 180.
141
with their own interests, devoid of any moral scruples, subject to their
needs, their wishes and their lust. It is a world where there is no space for
the old, who are first subjugated and then doomed to disappear.
Strehler’s Lear was premièred at Piccolo Teatro on the 4th November
1972. It was the first play that he directed after his return to the Piccolo
Teatro, which he had left in 1968. The reasons why he left the theatre that
he had founded twenty-one years before seem to be various and not totally
clear. Renato Palazzi, journalist, essayist, and director of the Scuola d’Arte
Drammatica ‘Paolo Grassi’ (Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art) from
1986 to 1995, mentions the interference of political parties in the
management of the theatre which had become unsustainable, the complexity
of running the theatre due to the exponential increase of its prestige and
artistic influence that made its structure more rigid and less manageable, the
refusal of the local and national authorities to find a new, more suitable seat
for the Piccolo Teatro, and the student protest which addressed Strehler
himself.71 Strehler, the man who had created the first civic public theatre in
Italy, was seen as a reactionary, a right-wing man, one who had
monopolized theatre, the ‘barone della scena’ (‘baron of the stage’).72 This
may not have been the principal reason for his resignation, but the quotation
above clearly hints at the lack of understanding between his generation and
the younger one. Actually, the protest did not only come from the students:
in 1967 the Convegno di Ivrea took place in Ivrea, in which men of theatre –
among whom were Bene and Ronconi – gathered to discuss the various
ideas and currents of Italian theatre and, for the first time, spoke of avantgarde theatre, and aimed to revolutionize the traditional concepts of
theatrical text, directing, role of the actor, theatre location, and the public. I
will talk about the Convegno di Ivrea in the next chapter, but I am interested
here in showing how these events may have influenced Strehler’s reading of
71
Renato Palazzi, ‘Le dimissioni di Strehler dal Piccolo nel 1968 e la contestazione della
regia e della politica degli stabili pubblici’, in Giorgio Strehler: Atti del convegno di studi
su Giorgio Strehler e il teatro pubblico (21 gennaio 2008, Roma, Sala Capitolare, Chiostro
del Convento di Santa Maria sopra Minerva), ed. Elio Testoni (Soveria Mannelli Catanzaro, 2009), pp. 112-113.
72
Stehler, Io Strehler, p. 232.
142
King Lear. Central to the discussion was opposition to traditional theatre
and the authority of the director, which they wanted to be replaced by a
group working together without hierarchies. This was deeply connected
with the ideological-political climate of those years of protest, but also with
experiences coming from abroad, most of all, that of the Living Theatre. In
the mid-1960s this group, which had been founded in 1947, toured Europe.
Its members were organized as a collective, living and working together
toward the creation of a new form of nonfictional acting based on the actor’s
political and physical commitment to using the theatre as a medium for
furthering social change. They came to Italy for the first time in 1961, and
their performances had a strong impact on Italian experimental theatre
practitioners.73 Opposing the traditional theatre also meant opposing the
‘teatri stabili’ (publically funded theatres with a resident company).74 The
contrasts between these new currents and Strehler’s theatre were strong and
on both sides there were words of sharp criticism. Despite the issue of the
generation gap, which seems to be dominant in the interpretation offered by
Strehler, the critics were unanimous in affirming that he was the first Italian
director who objectively represented the playtext of King Lear on the stage,
taking into consideration all the aspects present in Shakespeare’s tragedy:
Finalmente si è ascoltato Re Lear, tragedia delle tragedie (…), l’opera
più vasta e complessa fra le tante create dalla mente di Shakespeare, e
della quale, proprio a motivo della sua vastità e delle molteplicità dei
suoi temi, in tempi recenti e non soltanto in Italia sono state fornite
edizioni parziali, massimamente limitate ai problemi del potere.75
73
For a history of the Living Theatre see Massimo Dini, Teatro d’avanguardia americano
(Firenze: Vallecchi, 1978), pp. 29-63; see also Franco Perrelli, I maestri della ricerca
teatrale: Il Living, Grotowski, Barba e Brook (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2007).
74
Franceso Bono, ‘Dossier Ivrea 1967 “Mettere in causa il teatro in quanto tale”: alcune
note su Ivrea 1967’, in ateatro: webzine di cultura teatrale, 108.12, ed. Oliviero Ponte di
Pino <http://www.trax.it/olivieropdp/ateatro108.htm#108and12> [accessed 26 November
2012].
75
Raul Radice, ‘Carraro splendido Re Lear’, Corriere della Sera, 7 November 1972.
143
Finally we have heard King Lear, tragedy of all the tragedies (…), the
widest and most complex among those created by Shakespeare’s
mind, and of which, because of its vastness and the multiplicity of its
themes, in recent times and not only in Italy, partial versions have
been made, mostly focused on the problems of power.
Strehler’s King Lear, therefore, was not a partial version although,
analyzing the text we can notice that the two translators, Angelo
Dallagiacoma and Luigi Lunari, with the constant collaboration of Strehler,
made some cuts mainly concerning the very descriptive passages.
Translating the text took a long time; Dallagiacoma and Lunari provided
four different translations and, during rehearsal, Strehler kept revising the
final one, checking it again and again, along with the original text and other
existing translations.
Before carrying on, there is an issue that deserves to be looked into.
When talking about Strehler and about directing in Italy, the stress is always
on the original text, and on the importance of authenticity. This makes
sense, and it is understandable in the light of the adulterations made by the
previous generation of actors. Yet, if we go back to the time when the texts
were created, we will see that they were altered at so many different stages,
and by so many different hands, that the phrase ‘original text’ loses
consistency. Tiffany Stern gives a complete and fascinating account of the
instability and fluidity of Shakespeare’s texts in her Making Shakespeare.
The first reviser of the texts was Shakespeare himself, who might change his
mind as to characters and plot after writing the first draft. Alterations, or
even revisions over full plays, were also made – after a play had already
been performed – because London was a relatively small town that did not
provide an audience for a long run of the same play; therefore it had to be
changed if it was to remain current.76 Crucial are textual differences in
different versions of a play. Quarto and folio editions denote the size of the
76
Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London: Routledge, 2004), p.
45.
144
sheet on which the text was printed.77 In the first case the sheet was folded
twice, in the second only once. Q editions were relatively cheap,ephemeral,
small-format, single-play editions (like modern single-play paperbacks) that
came out at various times during Shakespeare’s career and afterwards.The
First Folio of 1623 was a large-scale, expensive, monumental, prestigious
‘collected works’ – a very different kind of publication (like a modern
hardback ‘collected works’). Some plays appear only in Q, or only in F;
most appear in both, and for some (like King Lear, as I will elucidate) there
are significant differences between Q and F texts. A ‘good’ Q text (there are
also ‘bad’ Q texts) is a text that is considered authoritative. But this does not
necessarily mean that it comes from Shakespeare’s hand. It may originate in
a rough draft by Shakespeare; in a scribe’s neat copy of a Shakespearian
draft; or in the playhouse ‘book’, which was used for prompting. A ‘bad’ Q
text, instead, is a text that is so confused that it cannot be considered
authoritative. It usually derived from a memorial reconstruction of whoever
supplied the manuscript to the printer, at a time when the author had no
legal right over his plays. As for F, all the texts it contains are ‘good’,78 but
again the sources were varied. Yet, since they were gathered together by
Shakespeare’s colleagues Heminges and Condell, they were more likely
than Q texts to have at least some kind of direct connection to the papers of
Shakespeare’s companies rather than being, for example, reconstructed from
memory. To make the whole issue even more confusing, anyone could have
a text printed. Usually textual ownership rested with the playing company,
but it was provided to whoever paid the stationers’ guild a sum of money.
The journey of the text from the first draft to the printhouse was long
and hazardous. The first draft (the foul paper) was usually very confusing,
and it often missed important information, like which character was
supposed to speak which lines. For these reasons, the foul paper was written
out in a fair copy by the author, or by a scribe. In the second case the first
changes from the author’s original were made. This version became the
77
78
From now on I will refer to Q for quarto and F for folio.
Ibid., pp. 46-48.
145
playhouse ‘book’. The book was then passed on to a prompter, who would
add his own amendments, and remove from the text the bits that were
considered inappropriate because of moral or political reasons. After this
stage, the text was sent to the Master of Revels for final censoring and
corrections. The text was not ‘safe’ even when it was in the hands of the
printer. The author’s handwriting may not have been clear, so the printer
would have to decipher what the word was, and if he could not, he simply
substituted it. Or he might mistake letters that were next to each other on the
trays or ‘cases’ that contained the pieces of type.79
In the light of all this, the task of the modern editor is hard, and, in
the presence of different versions of the same play, he or she has to make
choices. Conflated texts – that is a text that derives from the combination of
two (like Q and F when considered ‘good’) – were customary until the
1980s, and are still to be found today, but Stern points out that this way of
proceeding: ‘produces a superimposition of all available texts one upon the
other and is thus as far away as possible from what Shakespeare wrote at
any one time’.80
As for King Lear, the play was published in a Q version in 1608 and
then again in the first Folio of 1623, and the two versions differ
significantly. Yet it was not until the 1980s that awareness of these
differences became a main issue in scholarship. In his book King Lear: A
Parallel Text Edition, René Weis refers to the Oxford Complete
Shakespeare edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor as:
the first major edition of the works to treat Q and F as two different
texts, and therefore [belonging] to the new ‘disintegrationist’ school of
King Lear scholarship, an influential group of textual scholars, critics
and editors who have argued since the late 1970s that there is no ideal
single King Lear text; rather there are two different texts, one based
on the Quarto of 1608 (the ‘Pied Bull’ Q) and another, ‘revised’
79
80
Ibid., pp. 145 and 150.
Ibid., p. 158.
146
Shakespearian version which was published in the first Folio of
1623’.81
Therefore, it must be clear that every time I refer to Shakespeare’s ‘original’
texts, I am using an imprecise phrase.
Consequently, even Strehler’s claim to be at the service of the author
and to be the faithful interpreter of his words, is to be understood with a new
awareness thanks to the studies of scholars like Wells and Taylor. Bearing
in mind all this, what did Strehler mean by the ‘original’ text of King Lear?
According to the witness of one of the actors, Ernesto M. Rossi, Strehler
chose the F version. In his diary of rehearsals, he wrote: ‘(...) è stata seguita
l’edizione “in folio” considerata dagli studiosi più seri l’originale
shakespeariano’) ([Strehler and the translators] followed the “in folio”
version regarded by the most influential scholars as the Shakespearian
original’). Such an assumption was probably valid in the Italy of 1972, but it
is no longer today. Stern points out that the two Lear constitute two
completely different versions of the play, both probably authorial, and that
neither is necessarily worse or better than the other.82 In any case, it is
unlikely that Strehler only used F, as I found lines in the text used for his
production that are only in Q. At the time when they were working, both
Strehler and Rossi may have been unclear on the relations between Q and F,
and getting hold of a non-conflated text would have been difficult, so
Strehler may have worked with a conflated text believing it to be F, or it
was Rossi who made an incorrect statement. The other possibility is that
Strehler knew both versions, and he made choices, that give his ‘mark’ to
the production. Yet, in the book which contains the translation of the play,
Lunari imagines Strehler being asked: ‘Come intendi fare il Re Lear’?
(‘How do you want to do King Lear’?) According to the translator,
Strehler’s answer would have been: ‘Come lo ha scritto Shakespeare’ (‘As
81
82
René Weis, King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 2010), p. 1.
Stern, Making Shakespeare, p. 59.
147
Shakespeare wrote it’).83 In the light of the discussion above, we understand
that such a statement acquires a paradoxical quality. The wish to represent
the original texts on the stage contrasted with their fluidity and instability.
Therefore, we should regard Strehler’s concept of ‘what Shakespeare wrote’
as a construction, a fiction even, rather than a fixed and verifiable entity. To
some extent it was a rhetorical ploy to distinguish his practice and
philosophy from those of previous stagings, which had little to share with
either Q or F versions. Most of the stagings that had been seen in Italy
before had focused on the figure of the king, while the other characters were
only secondary and had never been considered in their individuality and
personal story.84 The clearest example is offered by Gloucester, whose
tragic life was usually regarded as a double of Lear’s, and whose physical
blindness symbolically represented Lear’s emotional blindness. Of course
Strehler saw this link between the two old men’s lives, but he gave
Gloucester and his story new dignity. This was achieved through the new
Italian version of the text (whichever it was), that reintroduced scenes that
had been deleted before and through Strehler’s requirements of his actors. In
particular, it was noted that Tino Carraro did not obscure the other actors
with his interpretation, and refrained from playing the role of the star
actor.85
In his essay ‘Irrappresentabile o illeggibile’ (‘Unperformable or
unreadable’) Lombardo affirms that Strehler’s production did not
concentrate on the characters, however big they may be, or on one topic in
particular – the filial ingratitude or the theme of madness; his was a difficult
journey into a play that, more than once, had been defined as
83
Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare (Verona: Bertani, 1973).
All theGreat Actors, from Rossi and Salvini to Emanuel, Novelli, Zacconi had had Lear
in their repertoire, but all of them had reduced the play to the figure of the king, offering
different views of his behaviour and of his madness. The first attempt of directing the play
was made by Franco Enriquez in Milan in 1955. The play received good reviews, but
Enriquez’s work resulted to be rather weak, as he did not manage to offer a comprehensive
direction to the staging.
85
He did the same in Strehler’s following Shakespearian production La Tempesta of 1978
in which he was Prospero. Strehler asked him to speak some of his most beautiful lines in
the dark, or turning the back to the audience, in order to allow them to focus on the poetry
and not on the actor.
148
84
‘irrappresentabile’.86 According to Lombardo, Strehler’s production was
actually the proof that King Lear can be represented in all its complexity; he
went even further stating that this is a play that cannot be read but only
represented on stage, thus challenging the opinion of those who affirmed the
opposite – Charles Lamb in 1811, or A. C. Bradley in 1904, just to mention
two. But Lamb’s judgement was based on the stagings that he had attended,
all based on Nahum Tate’s version of the play, History of King Lear,
published in 1681. In his version Tate added a love story between Edgar and
Cordelia, omitted the character of the Fool – as the presence of a comic
character was not tolerated in a tragedy – and changed the tragic ending for
a happy one, in which the good were rewarded and the bad were punished.
Only in 1838 did the English actor William Charles Macready (1793-1873)
restore the original play to a great extent. The problem for Lamb was also
that he was seeing the play in a period when rather over-the-top stagings of
features like the storm were fashionable. It was probably the discrepancy
between what he read and what he saw on the stage that led him to claim
that Lear’s inner suffering can only be conveyed through the words, not
through the actions of the actors on stage.87 Similarly, Bradley, who
regarded Lear’s tragedy as a universal one and as a journey from the outer
world of power and wealth to the liberation of the soul through pain and
suffering, believed that these inner feelings, and the universal dimension of
Lear’s journey of redemption and final state of ecstasy, can only be made
manifest through Shakespeare’s poetic language, not through stage
representation.88 The debate on whether Lear is a play that can be better
understood by reading it or by seeing it performed on the stage went on, and
was still very heated when Strehler worked on the play. Supposedly
Lombardo did not literally mean that Lear is ‘illeggibile’, but he believed
86
Lombardo, ‘Irrappresentabile o illeggibile?, in Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, 259267 (p. 260).
87
Paraphrased from Charles Lamb, ‘On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered with
reference to their fitness for Stage Representation’(1811), in Shakespeare criticism. A
selection 1623-1640 ed. D. Nichol Smith (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 215240. The section on King Lear is at pp. 232-233.
88
Paraphrased from Andrew C. Bradley, Shakespearian Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 211-212.
149
that the stage representation, far from hindering its understanding, helps
reveal its truth. And he refers to Strehler’s own words in an interview that
the director released to Roberto De Monticelli: ‘Tutte le cose del testo che
ho capito, le ho capite giorno per giorno, sulla scena’.89 (‘All the things of
the text which I have understood, I understood day by day, on the stage).
Yet, before starting rehearsal (which lasted two months), Strehler
studied the text thoroughly, collaborated with the translators,90 and read
critical works, among which there was Kott’s Shakespeare our
Contemporary, which influenced his staging to a good extent. He was most
likely indebted to Kott for the choice of the stage setting which was bare,
essential, poor, a reminder of Beckett’s minimalism (a sign of the lack of
values, of hope, of communication), and pessimism which Kott traced in the
Shakespearian tragedy comparing it with Fin de Partie (Endgame) by the
Irish writer.91
The publication of Kott’s book exerted a strong influence on many
stagings of the play in the second half of the twentieth century. In his
analysis of King Lear, the Polish critic distinguished between ancient
tragedy and modern tragedy, in which history has replaced ‘fate, gods and
nature’,92 and is seen as an absurd mechanism that has no direction and
where men are doomed to lose balance and to fall, thus provoking the
audience’s laughter. The tragic nature of life is conveyed through the
grotesque, as it happens in Beckett’s plays. And it is likely, according to
Kott, that Beckett traced this element in Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Lombardo did not share Kott’s critical reading of King Lear, and affirmed
that Strehler’s interpretation was much more objective than Kott’s. I agree
with his assumption as Kott’s essay leaves very little space for any different
reading of the text, but traces of his identification of the tragic with the
grotesque are visible in many aspects of Strehler’s staging, for example in
89
Lombardo ‘Irrappresentabile o illeggibile’, in Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, p. 260.
I will look at the issue of translation more closely in my analysis of Strehler’s 1978
production of La Tempesta.
91
Jan Kott, ‘King Lear or Endgame’, in Kott, Shakespeare our Contemporary transl.
Boleslaw Taborski (1965), 2nd edn (London: Methuen & co Ltd, 1967), 100-133.
92
Ibid., p. 109.
150
90
the director’s choice of setting the scene in a sort of circus and of arraying
Lear as a ringmaster and the Fool as a Pierrot, a clown. In more than one
scene, the characters have a clownish attitude and look like the ignorant
victims of a mechanism that they cannot control, thus recalling Beckett and
matching Kott’s ideas.
The total lack of hope that Kott saw in King Lear could be clearly
detected in Peter Brook’s production of the play (1962), which Strehler
knew.93 Brook interpreted the play in nihilistic terms, the reasons for which
Foakes traces in the main events of the twentieth century, namely the
Second World War, the use of the atomic bomb, and the cruelty of the
concentration camps.94 The English director saw the same sadism, the same
despair and bleakness in Shakespeare’s tragedy; therefore, in his opinion,
the play could be much more clearly understood by twentieth-century
audiences than by the nineteenth-century public. However, Kott’s and
Brook’s view did not convince Strehler, in whose production there is not
only desolation and anguish, but also faith in a better future and in man. If
we compare the stagings of the two great European directors, this becomes
evident. In his view of a bleak world that denies any possibility of
consolation, Brook chose to close act 3, scene 7 following the F version:
after Gloucester’s blinding, the last lines are attributed to Cornwall who,
well aware he is going to die, leaves the stage with Regan. Strehler, instead,
chose the Q version, which ends with a dialogue between two servants
showing pity for old Gloucester (3.7.96-104).95 For the same reason, the
English director eliminated Edmund’s final act of redemption in act 5, scene
3, which is in both Q (236-239) and F (217-221) when he tries to save
Cordelia’s and Lear’s lives, while Strehler restored it. The Italian director
also emphasized Edgar’s good-heartedness and made of him a more
93 Clear references to the fact that some elements of Strehler’s production (the acting and
the costumes chosen for Lear and Gloucester in the scene of the tempest) recall Brook’s are
to be found in Kennedy’s Looking at Shakespeare, pp. 218 and 219.
94 Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London:
Thomson, 1997), p. 83.
95 Weis, King Lear. I have chosen Weis’s book, as it provides both the Q and the F texts.
All subsequent references are from this.
151
articulate character who, in previous productions, had not been given much
significance. Following the F version of 1623, he gave Edgar the last lines
and changed them to make his faith in the future and trust in man clear.96
The original:
EDGAR
The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long. (5.3.299-302)
became
Noi invece obbediamo e pieghiamo la schiena
Sotto il peso di questa ora triste.
E diciamo quel che davvero pensiamo,
senza riguardi o pietà.
Molto i vecchi hanno sofferto.
Noi che siamo giovani
Non permetteremo
Che si vedano più simili sventure,
né pretenderemo di essere eterni.97
Instead we obey and bend our back
Under the weight of this sad hour.
And we say what we really think,
without regard or pity.
The oldest have suffered greatly.
We who are young
Will not allow
Similar misfortunes to be seen again,
Nor will we claim to be eternal.
96
97
These lines are spoken by Albany in the Quarto of 1608.
Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, p. 211.
152
In Strehler’s production, Edgar is seen as the new man who does not
escape his responsibilities and accepts the consequences of the wrong
actions committed by the older generation. Strehler thought that only out of
goodness and forgiveness can there be hope for the future, and he sees
Edgar and Cordelia as good and forgiving. There are two moments of
extreme tenderness in the production, in which Strehler’s trust in the
goodness of man is very clearly shown: the first is sequence R (the play is
divided in sequences from A to Z), where Edgar – disguised as poor Tom –
deceives his father who wants to die and invents a landscape for him,
inducing him to believe that he is falling off the cliffs of Dover; the second
is sequence U, in which Cordelia strokes her father while he is asleep. The
scenes, present in the playtext, are emphasised by Strehler. The second I
have mentioned is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s first ‘Pietà’:98 Cordelia is
sitting looking at the audience with an unconscious Lear lying in front of
her. Roles seem to have swapped: she is like a caring mother who is there
for her suffering son, like the Madonna with the body of Christ on her lap;
the idea of goodness, tenderness, purity and calm after the storm – in
naturalistic and metaphysical terms – is enhanced by Strehler’s choice of
dressing both characters in white. Cordelia is not the wife of the King of
France here (differently from Brook’s production, where she is seen as a
powerful Queen), and Lear is not a king; they are just a daughter and her
father, or the symbols of an old, pure order, subjugated by a new, uncaring
one.
98
Many critics have observed that the final tableau of the play, with the dead Cordelia in
Lear’s lap, is an inverted Pietà.
153
Figure 9: Ottavia Piccolo as Cordelia and Tino Carraro as Lear
The children are not all good-hearted. Regan, Goneril and Edmund
are evil, and Strehler made this very clear stressing the distance existing
between the older and the younger generation. The contrast between a good
order and a bad one, which Strehler identified as the play’s main theme in
the quotation given at the beginning of this section, is represented through
many different directing devices, like the use of lighting, the music, the
noises, the costumes, the tone of voice, the movements. The two old men,
Lear and Gloucester, wear loose clothes of a light colour, for example, while
the young wear very tight black leather trousers and black jackets. Regan
and Goneril have high-heeled shoes and excessive make up. Edmund speaks
fast, Regan and Goneril’s tone of voice is harsh and very masculine. The
scene in which Gloucester has his eyes gouged out is stunning in its cruelty.
The old man, whose arms are bound to ropes, is lowered into a trap door so
that the blinding is not visible to the audience, but what is happening is
absolutely evident. When he is pulled up, the audience sees his wounds in
place of his eyes and hears his scream when he realizes that Edgar did not
betray him. He did not scream while he was suffering physical pain, but he
does when he understands his huge mistake. And during the blinding Regan
sits near the hole of the trap door in a state of sexual excitement increased
by Cornwall who puts his hand on her genitals while committing his act of
154
cruelty against Gloucester.99 Another scene, which ranks among the best of
the production and perfectly shows the injustice committed by the evil
characters against the good one – Cordelia – , was that in which Lear carries
his youngest daughter’s body in his arms at the end of the play. On the bare
stage where only corpses are lying and only the silence of death can be
heard, Cordelia’s head suddenly appears from behind the black curtain at
the back of the stage, accompanied by a sudden, loud and shrill noise, just a
corpse in her father’s arms.
Figure 10: Ottavia Piccolo as Cordelia and Tino Carraro as Lear
The old man walks towards the proscenium, lays Cordelia’s body on
the floor, touches her, lifts her arm as if it were that of a puppet, looks at
her, and dies with her. In his notes Strehler wrote:
Alla fine quando Lear porta dentro Cordelia, Cordelia è nelle sue
braccia: l’idea di un fantoccio rotto, un fantoccino pallido, esangue,
dal viso bianco bianco. Lear la porta proprio come un fantoccino,
quasi facendole trascinare le punte dei piedi per terra, tenendola
abbracciata, al petto, con fatica, perché pesa, nonostante tutto. I
99
The scene of Gloucester’s blinding was deemed so shocking that it could only be
witnessed for the first time by early-twentieth-century English audiences. With the midtwentieth-century interpretations of the play and, in particular, with the publication of
Kott’s Shakespeare our Contemporary, directors made choices aimed at intensifying the
cruelty and sadism of the scene.
155
piedini sfiorano il fango e qualche volta strisciano lasciando una riga
lunga.100
At the end when Lear brings in Cordelia, Cordelia is in his arms: the
idea of a broken puppet, a little puppet, pale, wan, white-faced. Lear
carries her just like a little puppet, hugging her to his breast, with
effort, because despite all, she has weight. The little feet slightly
scrape the mud, and sometimes shuffle leaving a long line.
Lear’s last lines in Strehler’s version are ‘Guardatela bene, guardate, / le sue
labbra! / guardatela, guardate, là …’,101 which is an almost literal translation
of Lear’s last lines in F: ‘Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, /
Look there, look there’ (5.3.284-285). These lines are missing in Q, and this
gives us another clue as to which version or versions Strehler followed.
The characterization of the Fool – interpreted by an actress, Ottavia
Piccolo, who also played the part of Cordelia – was recognized as Strehler’s
best achievement in this production. Lombardo affirms:
Il suo Matto è veramente una cosa nuova, e ciò nel senso che di lui
vengono alla luce quelle qualità che la critica migliore aveva
individuato e che raramente tuttavia (e mai in Italia) avevano assunto
un così concreto rilievo scenico.102
His Fool is really a new thing, because Strehler brought to light all the
qualities that the best critics had discerned and that had rarely (and
never in Italy) acquired such concrete scenic relevance. 103
100
Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, p. 40.
Ibid., p. 209.
102
Lombardo, ‘Irrappresentabile o illeggibile’ in Strehler, Il Re Lear di Shakespeare, p.
263.
103
As I wrote at p. 150, in England the character of the Fool was eliminated from the play
in 1681 at the time of Nahum Tate’s adaptation History of King Lear. David Garrick’s King
Lear, premièred on 11 March 1742 at Drury Lane theatre, very much conformed with
Tate’s version and did not include the presence of the Fool, as well as Edmund Kean’s
156
101
In his idea of choosing an actress to interpret the double role of
Cordelia and the Fool, Strehler was certainly influenced by Bradley’s
Shakespearian Tragedy. Bradley affirmed that, at the time of Shakespeare,
the same boy presumably played the two roles.104 Strehler was not
convinced of this assumption105:
Bisognerebbe controllare tale affermazione [l’affermazione di
Bradley]: su quali basi è nata, dai registi? (non credo); dalla
tradizione? (non mi pare); da quale notizia allora?106
We should check this statement [Bradley’s]: where does it come
from? From the directors?, (I do not think so); from tradition? (It does
not seem to me); from which source then?
Yet he started his reflection from there. If the assumption was true,
he thought, why not have a woman be both Cordelia and the Fool? Casting
the same actress to play the two roles was justified by the fact that the Fool
appears when Cordelia disappears, only to appear again when the Fool has
left for good. Therefore, the Fool can be seen as an extension, a continuation
of Cordelia’s goodness and truth-speaking, and that is why his presence was
necessary after the banishment of the youngest daughter. But – Strehler
asked himself – what role would the Fool have if he remained on stage after
Lear’s change? Probably none, as the Fool’s task was that of opposing Lear,
of challenging him and forcing him to see the truth. His task was fulfilled
after the tempest, he had no longer a reason to be near the old King. Strehler
did not wish the audience to recognize the two characters in terms of voice
or physical appearance, but wanted them to be aware of the mysterious link
between the two. Ottavia Piccolo was acclaimed for her interpretation of the
version of 1823. It was only William Charles Macready, in his 1838 production, who reintroduced the figure of the Fool.
104
In Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare, p. 91.
105
Foakes argues that the role of Cordelia was played by a boy, while the Fool was
probably interpreted by Robert Armin (1568-1616), who replaced Will Kemp in 1600. In
Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 50.
106
Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare, p. 91.
157
Fool. Dressed as a Pierrot with a white face, she was able to give life to a
multi-faceted Fool, strict and tender, fragile and strong, cheeky and
frightened at the same time. What could not be rendered through the
translation in Italian, was resolved by Piccolo through her gestures,
movements and facial expressions.
Tino Carraro’s interpretation of the king was in general a huge
success. Poet and theatrical critic Roberto Rebora commented:
Tino Carraro ha portato magistralmente il grande personaggio dalla
cecità alla veggenza e alla disperazione incontenibile seguendo una
linea di recitazione diretta ed essenziale che propone un Lear del tutto
salvo dalle convenzioni interpetative.107
Tino Carraro brilliantly led the great character from blindness to
awareness and to unrestrained despair, along a straightforward and
essential line, offering a Lear totally devoid of acting conventions.
Strehler probably chose to dress Lear as a ringmaster in a circus to
underline the absurdity of his behaviour at the beginning of the play and his
lack of wisdom and future loss of dignity. At the beginning of the play,
Carraro presents his Lear as an authoritarian ruler who requires immediate
attention and obedience and who shouts his orders in an imperious tone. His
magnetic eyes stare at the interlocutor and reveal a self-confident man who
does not doubt the correctness and appropriateness of his behaviour. Little
by little, his facial expression changes and starts to show incredulity at what
is happening around him. It takes time before he fully realizes his huge
mistake and, during the tempest, the transformation of Carraro is complete.
The scene is well described by Strehler in his notes. While the bad
characters are protected in a sort of cage, the noise of thunder and the
howling of the wind announces the approach of the tempest. Then all goes
107
Roberto Rebora, ‘Strehler presenta Re Lear’, in Corriere del Ticino, 25.11.1972.
158
quiet, a curtain is rolled down to hide the stage, then it is lifted up again and
Lear reappears on the scene, a changed man who no longer speaks in his
harsh voice, but uses low tones which make his suffering clear. The physical
tempest is over but not the tempest inside his soul that Strehler represented
using a very strong, white light as opposed to the darkness of the tempest,
and shrill noises which only the old king can hear and which are to him like
repeated pricks of a needle in his head. Despite not being seen in the
tempest as in all previous productions of the tragedy, the scene was highly
effective and enhanced the idea of the parallel between the natural tempest
and the turmoil, the storm that was taking place in Lear’s soul.
After the tempest, Lear and Gloucester reappear dressed in rags,
costumes that remind very much of those chosen by Brook, to the extent
that, looking at photos of the two productions, it is difficult to distinguish
Strehler’s Lear and Gloucester from Brook’s.
Figure 11: Renato De Carmine as
Figure 12: Paul Scofield as Lear, Alan
Gloucester and Tino Carraro as Lear in
Webb as Gloucester and Brian Murray as
Strehler's Re Lear
Edgar in Brook's King Lear
Foakes points out that such robes were meant to look timeless, the
story of the two old men being the story of man, of many other ‘lost souls
groping about in a void’.108 This is another scene in which Kott’s influence
is visible in both Brook’s and Strehler’s stagings. The two old men are like a
Vladimir and an Estragon, the caricature of what they were, two clowns that
108
Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 3.
159
have lost control over their lives.109 But, as I said before, the difference
between the interpretation of Kott and Brook on one side, and of Strehler on
the other, is that while for Kott the theme of King Lear is the decay and fall
of the world, and Brook’s vision is apocalyptic with an overall effect that
tends towards nihilism, Strehler’s Re Lear can be seen as a journey of
knowledge from symbolic blindness to reality.
From 1681 until the mid-nineteenth century, theatre productions of
King Lear in Britain focused on Nahum Tate’s version of the play and on
the story of Lear. In later productions, mostly English and German, though
the focus was still on the character of Lear, more comprehensive readings of
the text followed, with the restoration of the tragic ending, the reintroduction of the figure of the Fool, and more complex characterization of
figures like Gloucester, Edgar, and Edmund. The play is certainly complex
and the presence of the sub-plot renders its staging more difficult; but
Strehler and other twentieth-century European directors, have shown that
King Lear can be represented in its entirety.
3.6 La Tempesta
As I wrote in the first section of this chapter, one of Strehler’s
greatest achievements was that of widening the range of Shakespeare’s
plays that had been seen on stage up to that moment in Italy. As for The
Tempest, only a puppet show based on the play had been staged in 1921 by
Vittorio Podrecca although, since the beginning of the nineteenth century,
many translations had been made. In her essay ‘Due Tempeste di Giorgio
Strehler’, Anna Anzi explains that the Italian Great Actors and mattatori
refused to play the role of Prospero because of the influence of nineteenthcentury critics who judged the story impossible to stage for its improbability
and for the presence of too many fantastic elements.110 Strehler was the first
109
It is very likely that Beckett was influenced by the pairing of Lear and Gloucester.
Anna Anzi, ‘Due Tempeste di Giorgio Strehler’ in Memoria di Shakespeare, 6 (Roma:
Bulzoni, 2008), pp. 221-222.
160
110
who brought The Tempest to Italy in 1948. After that spectacular version at
the Boboli Gardens in Florence he went back to the play and revived it in a
completely new version, which was staged at Milan’s Teatro Lirico in June
1978, broadcast by Italian state television (RAI) in December 1981, and
brought back to the stage (with a few changes) in 1983-84. This second
staging ranks among the best European productions of a play by
Shakespeare, so much so that, according to Dennis Kennedy, it: ‘may have
been the most important Shakespearian production since Brook’s Dream’.111
This version is of particular relevance to my work as the exchange of
letters between Strehler and the translator Lombardo, now available in the
already-mentioned book La Tempesta tradotta e messa in scena, 1977-78:
un carteggio ritrovato fra Strehler e Lombardo e due traduzioni inedite
realizzate da Lombardo per il Piccolo Teatro di Milano, is an invaluable
source, which offers essential insights into the issue of translation, and
allows us to follow, step by step, the work of Strehler as an ‘interpreter’ of
Shakespeare’s text.112 Moreover, the comparison with the first version
shows how the ideas that Strehler already had in his early years of directing,
in terms of his engagement with the work of Shakespeare, and in terms of
his role as a director, were fully realized in this production.
Once again, I wish to start the analysis of this production with
Strehler’s words. The first quotation comes from a letter that he wrote to
Lombardo (who translated the play for this staging) in August 1977. The
second is contained in Hirst’s book on Strehler:
Dove sono, io, per ora? Quasi nel vuoto. Con un tale cumulo di
interrogativi, di perplessità (…), davanti ad un testo che mi appare
sempre più insondabile (…) Con questi terrori, con questo tremore di
meraviglia quasi, davanti a un capolavoro assoluto, devo pensare ad
uno ‘spettacolo’ il più possibile giusto, il più possibile chiaro e
111
Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance,
p. 304.
112
This is confirmed by the collaboration that Strehler and Lombardo also had with Jan
Kott and which I will address further on in the chapter.
161
‘comprensibile’, almeno in una parte della sua ‘realtà’. Tutta la sua
realtà oltrepassa invece non solo le mie forze, i miei mezzi, ma
proprio (vorrei non dirlo!) ‘il teatro’.113
Where am I now? Almost in the void. With such a bundle of
questions, of doubts (…) facing a text which seems to me more and
more unfathomable (…). With these terrors, with this tremor of
wonder almost, in front of an absolute masterpiece, I must think
about a ‘show’ which is as right as possible, as clear and
‘understandable’ as possible, at least in a part of its ‘reality’. All of
its reality, on the other hand, overpowers not only my strength, my
means, but even (I’d rather not say it!) the ‘theatre’ itself.
But above all else it [The Tempest] is a huge metaphor of theatre.
Alongside the profound questions concerning life itself, history and
the problem of understanding that Shakespeare poses, there are also
questions about the destiny of theatre itself. That is, questions about
how and why we create theatre – we, people working in theatre –
and about what theatre should or could be.114
The words of the first quotation are uttered by a director who, after
directing over two hundred plays, still saw himself as the interpreter of the
text, the intermediary between the text and the audience, but who, this time,
doubted his capacity to fulfil his task. In the second quotation Strehler
outlines what for him is the main theme of the play: he saw The Tempest as
a ‘metaphor of theatre’, which gives him the opportunity to reflect upon
theatre, and upon what can or cannot be achieved through this means of
expression.
Even in this case the preparation of this staging was long and
included various steps, the first of which was the textual work and work on
113
Letter written to Lombardo in August 1977, in Shakespeare, Lombardo e Strehler, La
Tempesta: tradotta e messa in scena, pp. 5-6. Author’s italics.
114
Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 89.
162
the translation, alongside the reading of critical works, in particular of
Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Then followed the reading aloud
with the actors and, before starting rehearsal, a ten-day study seminar to
which Strehler invited Lombardo, Dallagiacoma, Lunari and Kott.115
In his book Strehler and Shakespeare, Lombardo affirms:
Ancora più importante della quantità [si riferisce alle messe in scena
di opera shakespeariane da parte di Strehler] è, invero, la qualità: il
livello sempre altissimo e sempre innovativo di queste regie, di questi
suoi ‘saggi’, come Strehler le definisce, quasi a indicare il lavoro
intellettuale che le sottende;116
Even more important than quantity [referring to Strehler’s stagings of
Shakespeare’s plays] is, truly, their quality: the constantly highest
level and innovative quality of these directed works, of these ‘essays’,
as Strehler defines them, as if he wanted to point to the intellectual
work that is at their root.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest can be interpreted in various ways: it has
been seen as the playwright’s artistic testament, as a metaphor of theatre, as
a journey of knowledge, as a colonialist or anti-colonialist play, as a
reflection on James I’s style of kingship; Prospero has been regarded as
Shakespeare towards the end of his life, maybe tired of his artistic
endeavours, as the director of a play, as a duke who made the mistake of
handing over his dukedom to devote himself to his books and to his magical
art (in a similar way to Lear who renounces his kingdom in favour of his
daughters), as the colonizer who exploits Ariel and Caliban (though in very
different ways). All these elements are taken into consideration in Strehler’s
staging, but the metatheatrical quality and the identification of Prospero
with a theatre director – with Strehler himself – certainly stand out. In fact
115
The transcription of part of the conversations among the five men can be found in:
Stefano Bajma Griga, La Tempesta di Strehler per Giorgio Strehler (Pisa: Edizioni ETS,
2003), pp. 91-111.
116
Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare, p. 8.
163
the production can be seen as a celebration of theatre in different forms:
through the emphasis put on Prospero as the director of the show; through
some extraordinary coups de théâtre; through the presentation of some
theatre genres like the Italian commedia dell’arte; and through a choice of
words that, more than in the English version, refer to the world of theatre.117
It is theatre meant to astonish the public with extraordinary illusionistic
effects, but also presented in its unreality in a very Brechtian way: it
represents life but, at the same time, it makes clear that it is not life. If the
island is theatre, Prospero is the director. In order to stage his play, the
director needs a set (the island), the actors and the public. Ariel (played by
actress Giulia Lazzarini) – the airy spirit, the white-faced clown, the servant
– is the actor, the one that gives life to the director’s vision.118
The production opens with the first stunning effect: the
representation of the tempest. Preceded by ‘a tempestuous noise of thunder
and lightning’, as Shakespeare’s text demanded, the scene opens with what
appeared to be a ship in the midst of the storm on which, little by little, the
various characters start to appear and to shout their lines. The natural
elements acquire more and more power, the waves seem to rise and fall,
until the mast breaks leading to the end of the scene. The sea withdraws and
the sound and fury of this first scene is replaced by the appearance of a male
figure, whose gestures and movements make him resemble an orchestra
conductor. The elements have calmed down, a stretch of sand appears, and
the man is joined by a girl, who rushes to the centre of the stage after
witnessing the tempest and the sinking of the ship. Little by little, we learn
that all has been organized and orchestrated by the man, by Prospero – the
magician – who starts to tell his story, of his past and of his arrival on the
island. The girl is Miranda, his daughter, who – like the audience – now gets
to know about her identity and the circumstances of the previous twelve
years. When, as if hypnotized by Prospero, she falls asleep, the second
117
I will provide a few examples when discussing the translation that was made for this
production.
118
This Ariel is certainly reminiscent of the Pierrot like Fool in Re Lear.
164
stunning effect is created. Prospero calls Ariel who, suddenly, makes her
appearance from the flies and hovers in the air by means of a thick, visible
wire which holds her, highly symbolic – according to Kott and Hirst – of the
relationship of director and actor: one of trust and need to be guided on the
one hand, of resentment and longing for freedom of expression on the
other.119
Figure 13: Giulia Lazzarini as Ariel and Tino Carraro as Prospero
Many critics, from Lombardo to Hirst, from Kennedy to Pia Kleber,
(and Strehler himself) refer to Brecht’s influence on the Italian director.120
Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt is reached by Strehler especially in the
television version of the staging, where all the theatrical tricks are clearly
visible. The tempest, which lasts five minutes, does not hide the fact that it
119
Kott, ‘Prospero or the Director: Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’, Theater, 10, 2 (1979),
117-122 (p. 119); Hirst, Giorgio Strehler, p. 84.
In my interview with Lazzarini, the actress praises Strehler who, contrary to most directors,
guided the actor without imposing his view. This may seem surprising thinking that
Strehler was an actor before being a director so he surely had his own acting method. Or,
just the opposite can be affirmed: being an actor himself, he knew that the best results can
be achieved when the actor finds his own way of expression. However, analyzing his
method of work, it can also be inferred that Strehler was quite authoritative, as I will
illustrate further on in this section.
120
Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare; Hirst, Giorgio Strehler; Kennedy, Looking at
Shakespeare; Pia Kleber, ‘Theatrical continuities in Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’, in
Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance.
165
is theatrical illusion created by man. The cloth representing the sea is
agitated by seventeen youngsters whom the public can see in the video
preparing it before the beginning of the performance. 121 In the interview that
Giulia Lazzarini granted me on 21 May 2011, she remembered those
youngsters and their role in the play:
le rive [erano] fatte da diciassette ragazzi che erano sotto (…); quando
si alzavano per i ringraziamenti, era un’apoteosi proprio perché erano,
erano bravissimi, vestiti tutti d’argento, sembravano tanti spermatozoi
[ride], uscivan tutti così da sotto questo mare meraviglioso.
The banks [were] made by seventeen youngsters who were underneath
(…); when they stood up for the applause, it was an apotheosis
because they were, they were excellent, dressed in silver, they looked
like many sperms [she laughs], they all came up from this wonderful
sea.
The thunder is made with percussion instruments which are also shown in
the video. Prospero and Miranda open a trap door on the floor in scene two
in which they place the cloak which is no longer needed.
The presence of Stephano and Trinculo, here presented as a
Brighella and a Pulcinella, the former speaking with a dialect from Northern
Italy, the second with a heavy Neapolitan accent, gives Strehler another
opportunity to reflect upon theatre, namely the Italian commedia dell’arte.
Like Brighella, Stephano is quite shrewd, dishonest and malicious, while
Trinculo is more ingenuous, more clownish; he speaks in a more gross way,
and relies more on gestures and movements than Stephano. Even their
appearance and manner, the way they are dressed and their movements,
echo the two characters from the commedia dell’arte. There is no evidence
121
In his ‘Prospero or the Director’, Kott argued that Strehler did not in fact make the
illusion of the theatre clear; that was his original idea which, instead, only remained in the
television version.
166
of a direct influence of the commedia degli zanni122 on Shakespeare, but
very strong similarities between scenes from the Italian arte scenarios and
scenes from The Tempest justify, at least, the assumption that Shakespeare
shared some common sources with the commedia and that by 1611, as
Richard Andrews suggests: ‘both The Tempest and the scenarios [were]
fishing in an existing pool of plot theatergrams which dramatists and
practitioners could pick up by a variety of means’.123 In his talk given at the
Verona Conference ‘The Tempest at 400’ in December 2011, Andrews drew
parallels between various scenes from The Tempest and arte scenarios, and
between the former and scripted Italian plays from the 1580s based on the
‘magical pastoral’ format. To the end of discussing the characters of
Trinculo and Stephano and their role in the play, I will only refer to one of
the arte scenarios referred to by Andrews, namely Flaminio Scala’s
collection of arte ‘scenarios’.124 In The Fourteenth Day, or The Fourteenth
Item, as Andrews referred to it, there is a short exchange between Fabritio
and Arlecchino that would be echoed in act 3 scene 2 of The Tempest. In the
Italian scenario,
Fabrizio, ridendo, racconta le miserie de gli amanti, dicendo in uno
male d’Amore; in quello Arlecchino vestito da furfante li dà una
mentita, e fugge. Fabrizio di nuovo torna a dir mal d’Amore.
Arlecchino fa il medesimo, e fugge. Fabrizio caccia mano alla spada, e
li corre dietro, e qui finisce l’atto primo.125
Fabritio laughingly speaks of the misery of lovers; next Arlecchino
enters, dressed as a rogue. He calls Fabritio a liar and runs off.
122
In their essay ‘Commedia dell’arte’, Kenneth and Laura Richards explain that the term
‘commedia dell’arte’ derives from eighteenth-century usage. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the Italian improvised theatre was known as ‘commedia italiana’, or
‘degli zanni’, or ‘a soggetto’, or ‘mercenaria’. In A History of Italian Theatre, ed. Joseph
Farrell and Paolo Puppa, p. 102.
123
Richard Andrews ‘The Tempest and Italian improvised theatre’, unpublished conference
paper, ‘The Tempest’ at 400, Verona University, 15-17 Dec 2011.
124
A scenario was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play
that was pinned to the back of the scenery. It is also known as canovaccio.
125
Flaminio Scala ‘Il teatro delle favole rappresentative’, in La Commedia dell’Arte, ed.
Cesare Molinari (Roma: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1999), p. 122.
167
Fabritio continues with his comments on love’s miseries. Arlecchino
reappears and again calls him a liar and runs. Fabritio draws his sword
and chases him, and the first act ends.126
In act 3 scene 2 of The Tempest, Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban are
conspiring against Prospero. Ariel, invisible to them, but visible to the
audience interjects the words ‘Thou liest’! into the conversation of the
conspirators. Scala’s collection is from 1611, the same year as the first
performance of The Tempest. What does this tell us? Scala’s collection does
not include material that was invented at the moment when the collection
was put together, but was put there because it had already been used by
professional companies. Therefore, Andrews argues that the repeated and
elastic (in that it could be repeated as many times as the actors wanted)
‘Thou liest’ gag already existed by 1611. ‘It existed in a stock of theatre
material which transcended linguistic boundaries – an orally transmitted
patrimony, available for any clown or any dramatist to use’.127 The question
is how this patrimony would have been available to Shakespeare. Kenneth
and Laura Richards speak of the great reputations that some Italian troupes
performing commedia dell’arte had acquired by the end of the sixteenth
century not only in Italy but also abroad. Touring in various European
countries had started in the 1570s and, although troupes did not often reach
England, there are traces of their journeys to the island.128 Also, they toured
extensively in France where some English theatre practitioners may have
been and picked up their material. It is very likely, therefore, that
Shakespeare had access to this material.
The clearest example of the director’s wish to stress the
metatheatrical quality of the play is represented by the final scene. When
Prospero renounces his magic and breaks his wand, the whole set collapses,
revealing how theatrical illusion is created. It is only after the audience’s
126
Scenarios of the Commedia dell’arte: Flaminio Scala’s Il Teatro delle favole
rappresentative transl. Henry F. Salerno (New York: New York University Press, 1967).
See also Andrews, ‘The Tempest and Italian improvised theatre’.
127
Andrews, ‘Tempest and Italian improvised theatre’.
128
Kenneth and Laura Richards, ‘Commedia dell’arte’, pp. 115 and 117.
168
applause that it reassembles, thus implying the need for the public to decree
the success of the play, and to allow theatre to live, and to perform its role
of educating and entertaining.
Kleber affirms that the set was conceived by Luciano Damiani (one of
Strehler’s most faithful collaborators) to show theatre as theatre, according
to Brecht’s lesson, in so far as the island was not presented in naturalistic
terms.129 Brecht’s idea of the Verfremdungseffekt can also be traced in the
acting: when Prospero tells Miranda the story of their past life, he becomes
the typical Brechtian actor, who distances himself from the story that he
himself has experienced and narrates it in the third person. In the interview,
Lazzarini explains how the actors reached the Verfremdungseffekt:
Lui [Strehler] voleva che il personaggio vedesse sè stesso fare il
personaggio (...) il teatro epico rappresenta una cosa, però la deve
vivere, (…) la vive e la rappresenta; anche Il giardino dei ciliegi era
così. C’è sempre questo gioco del teatro … che tu sei sempre al di
fuori, vedi il personaggio che ‘disse’; (…) Virginia entrava e vedendo
il padre che guardava … “Dove vai Virginia?” ‘disse’ , diceva il padre
e Virginia rispondeva “Vado a messa con la signora Sarti, babbo”
‘disse Virginia’. Erano personaggi rappresentati quindi acquistano
quel tanto di volume in più, di sospensione (…) non è recitazione
naturalistica ecco e permette lo straniamento. (…) Ora si recita
Shakespeare come se fosse … quello che noi diciamo semplice,
moderno, buttato via. No, non è buttato via, è moderno, semplice, ma
è sostenuto da un modo di recitare che, ecco, nella nostra Tempesta si
sente. Molti oggi recitano così, semplice, moderno, buttato via, però
poi gli spettacoli non hanno quell’importanza che deve avere uno
spettacolo.
He [Strehler] wanted the character to see himself play that character
(…) epic theatre represents a thing (…), but it lives it, it lives and
129
Kleber, ‘Theatrical Continuities in Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest’, p. 144.
169
represents it; even Il giardino dei ciliegi [The Cherry Orchard] is like
that. There is always this game of the theatre … you are outside, you
observe the character who ‘said’; (…) Virginia entered and seeing her
father watch her … “Where are you going, dad?” ‘said Virginia’.
They were represented characters so they have volume, suspension
(…) it is not naturalistic acting and allows estrangement. (…) Now
you play Shakespeare as if he was … what we call ‘simple, modern
and thrown away’. No, it is not thrown away, it is modern, simple, but
it is sustained by an acting style, that you can feel in our Tempesta.
Many act like this today, simple, modern, thrown away, but plays do
not have the importance that a play should have.
Also in the choice of words, Strehler emphasized the theatrical element. Let
us see for example, how Lombardo and Strehler translated a few lines from
3.3, in which Prospero talks to Ariel:
PROSPERO: Bravely the figure of this Harpy hast thou
Perform’d, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring:
Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated
In what thou hadst to say: so, with good life
And observation strange, my meaner ministers
Their several kinds have done. (3.3.83-88)130
PROSPERO: Recitata bene, mio Ariel,
La tua parte di Arpia.
Hai divorato con grazia.
Nelle tue battute non hai dimenticato
Nessuna delle mie indicazioni.
E bene anche gli altri,
130
Shakespeare, Lombardo, Strehler, La Tempesta, pp. 262-263. In the book Colombo
states that Lombardo used the English text from the Shakespeare New Arden edited by
Frank Kermode. The text is reproduced in the book edited by Colombo. Therefore, all the
quotations I have chosen (in English and in Italian) are from this. I indicate the lines of the
English at the end of the quotation.
170
I miei più umili ministri,
Che hanno recitato anche loro
Con grande naturalezza e raro impegno.131
At line 86, the words ‘in what thou hadst to say’, become ‘nelle tue
battute’ which, if we translate back into English, would be ‘in your lines’;
also, the English ‘my meaner ministers / their several kinds have done’ at
87-88, becomes ‘i miei più umili ministri, / che hanno recitato’, where
‘recitare’ is ‘to perform’ in English.
However important the metatheatrical quality of The Tempest was to
Strehler, he did not overlook other aspects of the play and, differently from
the first production, he also analysed the characters and their relationships
thoroughly. Carraro-Prospero shows a variety of attitudes: he is a loving
father but he can also be quite authoritative, he is a strong man and a
powerful magician who can direct the natural elements but, at the same
time, he is an ageing man who wishes for peace for the remaining years of
his life; he is also the colonizer who, through the tone of voice and body
postures and movements, exerts his authority over Caliban and Ariel.
Figure 14: Michele Placido as Caliban and Tino Carraro as Prospero
Strehler’s Caliban perfectly represents the colonized, the victim. The
actor, Michele Placido, is painted coal black and, in his movements, he is
very grounded, as if to show his instinctive part, his earthiness compared to
131
Ibid., p. 263.
171
Lazzarini-Ariel, a light, white-faced Pierrot who hovers on the stage. The
choice of a slender woman – disguised as a being without a precise sex – is
very appropriate and matches the image we get of Ariel from Prospero’s
words, ‘a spirit too delicate/To act her [Sycorax’s] earthy and abhorred
commands’ (1.2.272-273) where the adjective ‘delicate’ stands for ‘fine’,
‘exquisite’ or ‘delightful’, ‘charming’ as opposed to ‘earthy’ which, as I
have already pointed out, perfectly applies to Strehler’s Caliban. And later
on in the text, Prospero calls Ariel ‘bird’: ‘This was well done, my bird’
(4.1.184), a line which may suggest Ariel’s ability to fly, Prospero’s
affection for a pet and, once again, the idea of Ariel as a diminutive being.
Lazzarini gives a clear idea of who or what Ariel was for Strehler:
dovevo essere questa cosa che volava e lui [Strehler] aveva in mente
una pallina, sai, una pallina da cui escono due mani e due piedini; era
molto difficile fare la pallina che vola. (…) Strehler voleva l’aria,
voleva l’aria messa dentro nel pino che lui libera, la poesia,
l’inconsistenza, la trasparenza.
I had to be this thing that flew and he [Strehler] had a little ball in
mind, you know, a little ball from which two little hands and two little
feet emerged; it was very difficult to be a little ball that flies. (…)
Strehler wanted air, he wanted air captured in a pine, and he frees it:
poetry, inconsistency, transparency.
At the end of the show, Ariel is released; in Strehler’s production
he/she does not go back to the elements, but exits running along the aisle in
the stalls. Kott noticed that: ‘He is not departing to the cold freedom far
away from the world of mortals’,132 but Strehler’s choice is in line with his
reading of the text: Ariel goes back to the world, he leaves the theatre as this
being is just an actress playing a role.
132
Kott, ‘Prospero or the Director’, p. 122.
172
3.7 The Translation of The Tempest by Agostino Lombardo
and Giorgio Strehler
There would be more to say about Strehler’s La Tempesta, of which
much has been written in Italian but also in English; however, for the
purpose of this chapter, in which I want to illustrate how the great Italian
director worked, I will only address one other issue, the translation made by
Lombardo with the active collaboration of Strehler. New translations of
Shakespeare’s plays started to appear in Italy in the 1940s due to a renewed
interest in the work of the English playwright, after his fortune had declined
with the advent of Verism and the flourishing of a bourgeois theatre. The
new translations were needed as the shift to the director’s theatre, in its first
manifestations, claimed the pre-eminence of the text; therefore, the material
that directors worked with was not suitable for exploring the text in depth,
as these translations had been made for the end-of-nineteenth-century and
beginning-of-twentieth-century productions, with their focus on the great
characters of Shakespeare’s plays. In the letter that Strehler wrote to
Lombardo in August 1977, he submitted to the scholar important thoughts
on how to make a translation for the stage. He also made suggestions on
how to proceed with their work, which he saw as a necessary ongoing
collaboration to provide the appropriate scenic translation. He suggested
that he and Lombardo worked side by side, with the translator submitting
parts of the translated text to the director, which the latter would read and
amend where necessary, and then return to the translator for a final revision:
Noi dovremmo prepararlo insieme questo ‘spettacolo-traduzionespettacolo’, almeno nei limiti del possibile.133
133
Shakespeare, Lombardo and Strehler, La Tempesta, p. 7. Strehler’s emphasis.
173
We
should
prepare
this
‘performance-translation-performance’
together, at least within the limits of the possible.
This is, in fact, what they did. As Anzi states in the afterword to the
book La Tempesta: tradotta e messa in scena, Strehler’s letters are really
essays on how to translate for theatre.134 The book provides two translations,
the one made by Lombardo for the reading, and the other intended for the
staging, which was the result of Strehler’s emendations. Sometimes, the
DVD of the television broadcast offers some further changes.
The issue of translation raises a number of questions. What are the
requisites of a good translation and, more specifically, of a good translation
for the stage? It is impossible for me to investigate the matter in detail. The
field of Translation Studies is recent (it started in the 1960s), but there are
now a number of books and articles that should be analysed carefully.
Translation Studies started as a branch of Linguistics. It was only in the
1980s that it began to move away from the simple comparison between two
different languages, and expanded its scope to explore the cultures involved
in the production and reception of texts and translated texts. And only
recently has Translation Studies started ‘to engage and deal with the textual
and metatheatrical problems of drama translation together’.135 This means
that before, problems concerning performability, speakability, and
playability were not taken into account. According to such views the
translator should not engage with issues concerning the staging of a playtext
and problems that may arise with a translation that does not take such issues
into account. The idea of seeing a playtext as a literary text, created solely
for the page, has been suggested – among others – by Susan Bassnett,
according to whom:
Whilst the principal problems facing a director and performers involve
the transposing of the verbal into the physical, the principal problems
134
Ibid., p. 367.
Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes, ‘Between Words and Silences: Translating for the Stage
and the Enlargement of Paradigms’, Scientia Traductionis, 7 (2010), 120-133 (p. 121).
174
135
facing the translator involve close engagement with the text on page
and the need to find solutions for a series of problems that are
primarily linguistic ones (…). I would argue that these considerations
should take precedence over an abstract, highly individualistic notion
of performability, and that the satisfactory solution of such textual
difficulties will result in the creation of a target language text that can
then be submitted to the pre-performance readings of those who will
undertake a performance.136
Most recent studies see the translated text as a re-creation, and a
work of art in its own right, that should suit the taste of the audience for
whom the text will be performed. According to David Johnston translating a
play can be compared with writing one because it should work, provoke,
and engage the audience as much as any good play. 137 As I have pointed
out, the matter is quite complex, but what interests me here is to investigate
a few aspects of how to translate Shakespeare and of the work that Strehler
did with Lombardo.
The question we have to ask is: what are the problems connected
with rendering a Shakespeare play in a language other than English? A lot is
lost in a translated text: the blank verse cannot be kept in Italian, the
innumerable puns can only be partially translated, the metaphors are not
easily rendered in a translation. Yet Shakespeare has been translated
everywhere in the world and knowledge of his works occurs more often via
translations than not. The debate on the extent to which Shakespeare can be
appreciated in a translation was particularly heated around the 1990s, and
was part of the debate on whether Shakespeare’s early modern English
should be translated into modern English.138 Among the voices that
defended the value of translations was that of Michael Billington, the theatre
136
Susan Bassnett ‘Translating for the Theatre: the Case Against Performability’,
(www.erudit.org) <http://id.erudit.org/037084ar> [accessed 3 September 2012].
137
In Balduino Fernandes ‘Between Words and Silences’, p. 125.
138
See the introduction to Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, ed. Tom
Hoenselaars (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004), 17-21.
175
critic of The Guardian, who argued that translations can reveal unsuspected
aspects of the text:
aspects of a play we [as an English audience] would overlook shine
out more clearly when transmitted through the prism of another
language, culture, and history … I am not trying to suggest that
Shakespeare is better in translation. I am simply suggesting that the
plays acquire a different resonance and richness – a new patina of
meaning – when seen through foreign eyes.139
And, as I have already pointed out in the introduction, the same has been
expressed by Salman Rushdie:
It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation;
I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.140
I think that Billington and Rushdie have a point here. As it is
impossible to render all of Shakespeare’s language into another, the play, in
a translation, may reveal some new facets. It is all the more true when it
comes to stage productions in a language other than English. This happens
because what cannot be conveyed through words, can be rendered through
other instruments on the stage, like settings, music, costumes, lights, the
actors’ tone of voice, facial expression, gestures and movements, through
which a foreign director may offer new insights into the play. For example,
if I compare Strehler’s La Tempesta with the recent production directed by
Sir Trevor Nunn (with Ralph Fiennes playing the role of Prospero), which
ran at the Royal Haymarket London from 27th August to 29th October 2011,
I think that Strehler’s Prospero was a more varied and multi-faceted
character than Nunn’s, despite Fiennes’s undoubted acting skills. For me,
this proves that the words are only a part – although the most important – of
a theatre production and that translating for the stage is not the same as
139
Ibid., p. 21.
Globe to Globe Festival Programme, p. 2. The quotation is contained in Rushdie,
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991.
176
140
translating for reading. A translation for theatre inevitably implies a scenic
translation, by which I mean the non-verbal elements that a director
disposes.
Besides the articles I have already referred to which deal with
translation of playtexts in general, among the tools I have used to shape my
ideas on translation of a Shakespeare play there is a book (Shakespeare and
the Language of Translation), a DVD (Playing Shakespeare),141 and an
article (‘Learning Shakespeare’s Secret Language: The Limits of
“Performance Studies”’).142 The book is a collection of essays focusing on
various issues related to translating Shakespeare’s plays and on adapting
them for the stage; in the DVD Associate Director and co-founder of the
Royal Shakespeare Company, John Barton, reflects upon the hints that
Shakespeare gives to the actors, stage directions that are contained in the
words; in the article, John Russell Brown encourages actors and watchers of
Shakespeare’s plays to recognize the secret language of Shakespeare, again
those cues to the actors that are hidden in the text. A common element to all
of these sources is the idea that Shakespeare’s words, prosody, metaphors,
rhythms, and images, all suggest how a line should be spoken, which
intention it should convey, and which gesture and which movement it
should inspire. If this is true, and I believe it is, the answer to the question:
‘Can Shakespeare’s plays be translated?’ should be in the negative. How
can the words, the prosody, the metaphors, the rhythms, the images be kept
in a foreign language? In Shakespeare and the Language of Translation,
theatre translator Jean-Michel Déprats gives his answer in the essay
‘Translating Shakespeare’s Stagecraft’: here he explains how, when
translating Shakespeare’s plays for performance, one does not just translate
for the theatre; one translates theatre, translating words into new words, but
also into movement, light and sound. In particular, he draws attention to the
141
Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, ed. Tom Hoenselaars (London: Arden
Shakespeare, 2004); Playing Shakespeare, DVD, directed by John Carlaw (Acorn Media,
UK: 2010).
142
John Russell Brown, ‘Learning Shakespeare’s Secret Language: the Limits of
“Performance Studies”’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24.3 (Aug., 2008), 211-221.
177
fact that, when translating theatre, one should translate for the muscles,
nerves and lungs of the actors. The theatre phrasing is directly linked to the
breathing, and the breathing requires pauses and suspensions:
Shakespeare’s plays are theatre first and foremost in the sense that
they must be spoken, that their breathing, scansion and rhythm give
them life. Above all, then, translating Shakespeare for the theatre
means listening to the spoken voice. A voice, a way of speaking, or a
rhythm will make the translator favour one word, one kind of melody
or phrase over any other. The rhythmic pulse, whether it be slow or
rapid, flowing or jerky, is what constitutes the tune and inner poetics
of each translation. Without the melody, a translation is but a
sequence of lifeless words; though they may be accurate, they will
have no inner justification and will not work on stage.143
Similar thoughts were submitted to Lombardo by Strehler in the
letter which he wrote to him in August 1977 and which I mentioned at the
beginning of this section. Strehler strongly felt the importance of
participating in the translation as the two men had different needs.
Lombardo was the philologist who dedicated all his life to studying,
understanding, writing on and translating Shakespeare; therefore he wished
to provide a translation which would be as faithful to the original text as
possible in terms of words and phrases on the one hand, and of sentence
length and alternation of verse and prose on the other. Strehler did not differ
in terms of providing a detailed and correct understanding of the text
through his staging but, of course, was mostly concerned with words and
lines that would be ‘dicibili’ (‘speakable’), that could be spoken. However,
they agreed that in theatrical speech there should be:
sempre implicito il tono con cui l’attore dovrà pronunciarla, il gesto
che dovrà compiere, l’atteggiamento che dovrà assumere, le maschere
143
Jean-Michel Déprats, ‘Translating Shakespeare’s Stagecraft’ in Hoenselaars,
Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, pp. 133-147 (p. 137).
178
che dovrà indossare, la libertà stessa d’improvvisare che potrà
prendersi.144
always implicit the tone with which the actor should pronounce it, the
gesture that he has to make, the attitude he has to assume, the masks
he has to wear, the freedom he has to improvise.
A word, therefore, is not just a word, it contains much more than a
meaning; it is more than its semantic value, it contains the right tone of
voice, the actor’s gestures and movements. And, closely related to the
quotation above from Déprats, Strehler believed that the most important
element was rhythm. But which was the correct rhythm? Lombardo strove
to use a rhythm that corresponded to Shakespeare’s, but that was not
necessarily the appropriate rhythm for Italian actors. Strehler attempted to
use the hendecasyllable (typical of Italian poetry), and ended up with
hendecasyllables that become settenarii (seven-syllable lines), novenarii
(nine-syllable lines), quick verses alternating with slow ones according to a
‘music’ which is also:
una musicalità mia personale, alla quale non posso sottrarmi e che è
legata ad un certo modo di ‘interpretare’ le scene e le situazioni.
Sperando sempre che questo abbia veramente a che fare con una
possibile realtà del testo di SH [Shakespeare].145
my own musicality, which I cannot avoid and which is linked to a
certain way of ‘interpreting’ scenes and situations. Always trusting
this has really got something to do with a possible reality of the text of
SH [Shakespeare].
Strehler argued that you either translate line by line, as in English (but
this is not always possible), or you search for the right music and rhythm to
render the playtext dramatically in the Italian language. His choice fell on
144
145
Shakespeare, Lombardo and Strehler, La Tempesta: tradotta e messa in scena, p. 372.
Ibid., p. 8. Strehler’s emphases.
179
the second possibility which is arguably the only viable one, when it comes
to transferring the text into theatrical action, and it seems to me to be all the
more appropriate to Shakespeare’s texts, which were created for the stage.
When Strehler wrote to Lombardo, he had read Lombardo’s
translation of act 1. In order to explain to Lombardo what he needed for the
staging he used the first three lines of scene 2 in the version that the
translator had sent him, amended with his own suggestions. The scene
begins with Miranda who, after witnessing the tempest, rushes to her father
to ask him to calm the sea:
If by your Art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch. (1.2.1-3)
The following is Lombardo’s translation of the three lines:
Se con la vostra Arte, mio carissimo padre, avete
Precipitato le acque selvagge in questo tumulto, ora
Acquietatele. Il cielo sembra voler versare fetida pece.146
Lombardo’s translation is faithful to the original in terms of
vocabulary and of verse length, a perfect translation for the reading but not
always for the speaking. This is how Strehler amended the text according to
his needs:
Se con la vostra Arte, / mio carissimo padre (7+7)
Avete gettato / le onde (acque) selvagge / in questo tumulto (6+6+6)
Ora calmatele. / Sembra che il cielo (6+5=11)147
We can notice that in Strehler’s suggestion, the verb ‘have’ which is
in line 1 in the original and was kept there by Lombardo – ‘avete’ – was
moved to line 2 by Strehler for speaking reasons: Strehler argued that
146
147
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 9.
180
Miranda enters the stage when Prospero is there already and, most likely,
she runs as she has just witnessed the tempest and the sinking of the ship.
This means that she probably speaks excitedly, but this excitement is not
rendered in Italian with the ‘avete’ at the end of the line. In his essay
Déprats affirms that:
Preserving the oral and sonorous impact of the text requires a
translation which is more concerned with movement and rhythm than
with intellectual understanding.148
And also:
A translation which does not lend itself to acting is a
misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of Shakespeare’s
works.149
By moving the verb ‘avete’ to line 2, Strehler was preserving ‘the
oral and sonorous impact of the text’ and, through the position of that word
in the verse, was conveying meaning. Moreover, Lombardo’s translation of
the word ‘allay’ with ‘acquietatele’ did not convince the director who
preferred ‘calmatele’ in order to avoid two consecutive ‘a’s (‘ora
acquietatele’) that do not allow fluent speech. The final version which was
actually heard on the stage after the two men reached an agreement was:
Se con la vostra Arte, mio carissimo padre,
Avete gettato le acque selvagge / In questo fragore,
Ora calmatele. Sembra che il cielo / Voglia rovesciare fetida pece150
A change of word appears in this version: the word ‘tumulto’
becomes ‘fragore’ because the translation for ‘roar’ in line two (sounded
and onomatopoeic in English) is not rendered by the word ‘tumulto’ (mute
148
‘Translating Shakespeare’s Stagecraft’, p. 138.
Ibid., 144.
150
Shakespeare, Lombardo and Strehler, La Tempesta: tradotta e messa in scena, p. 145.
181
149
and non-onomatopoeic) in Italian; Strehler’s suggestion was a word like
‘ruggito, fragore, urlo’ where the ‘r’ sound has in Italian the same effect that
‘roar’ has in English. Moreover, Strehler wished to create a very sonorous,
noisy, roaring, frightening tempest with shouts and cries. Miranda’s words,
therefore, referred to something that had just happened in front of the
audience’s eyes. This example serves to clarify that a theatre translation is
also – should we say primarily? – the interpretation of a work in a musical
sense, but I would add that the choices made for the acting, for the spoken
word, contribute to the interpretation of the play in an hermeneutic sense. If
Strehler managed to reach this objective, it means that he did, in the Italian
version, what Shakespeare had done in his own language: he conveyed the
meaning through the sound. The two examples (the choice of the word
‘fragore’ and moving the verb ‘avete’ from line 1 to line 2) also prove the
‘gestural’ quality of the spoken word, by which I mean the ‘Gestus’ in
Brechtian terms: a word, a phrase, a verse, the verse length, produce an
attitude and create meaning in the same way as the combination of gesture,
facial expression and body language do.
The translator and director’s task became even more difficult when it
comes to Ariel’s songs. As Strehler himself stated, these songs could only
be paraphrased, and what could not be rendered with a literal version in
Italian was provided with a musical equivalent. Lombardo’s translation of
‘Full fadom five thy father lies’151 was rather faithful as to the choice of
words and to the verse length.
Full fadom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
Buth doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. (1.2.400-405)
151
Usually we find ‘fathom’, but in the text edited by Colombo ‘fadom’ is given.
182
A cinque tese sott’acqua tuo padre giace.
Le sue ossa sono già corallo,
Quelli che erano i suoi occhi sono perle.
Tutto ciò che di lui deve perire
Subisce un mutamento marino
In qualcosa di ricco e strano.
Ninfe del mare ad ogni ora
Suonano per lui la campana a morto.152
Clearly he could not maintain the rhyme of the original text (A-B-AB-C-C-D) and provide the appropriate rhythm in Italian. According to
Strehler, this could be rendered through much shorter lines. So, the version
for the staging was:
A cinque tese sott’acqua / Tuo padre giace.
Già corallo / Son le sue ossa
Ed i suoi occhi / Perle.
Tutto ciò che di lui / Deve perire
Subisce una metamorfosi marina
In qualche cosa / Di ricco e di strano.
Ad ogni ora / Le ninfe del mare
Una campana / fanno rintoccare.153
In his essay, Déprats argues that ‘translating for the theatre does not
mean making the text easier to act and speak by breaking it into sections,
smoothing out its roughness or pruning its metaphors’, and that ‘we must
come back to a certain degree of literalness, going against one of the most
current notions which claims that being literal is the reverse of being exact’
as ‘in Shakespearian translation, being literal is a better way of preserving
152
Shakespeare, Lombardo and Strehler, La Tempesta: tradotta e messa in scena, p. 145.
Ibid., p. 177. Further little changes were made for the television broadcast directed in
1981 by Claudio Battistoni. Lines seem to be short in that version too, while the order of
some words was changed.
183
153
the form, which is a source of theatrical energy’.154 I do not think that
anyone would object to these ideas, but it is self-evident that a literal
translation is not always viable, as two different linguistic systems will
never match. Translation is work in progress, it depends on a number of
factors, and a perfect, immutable translation will never be provided. Every
time a translator takes up a translation, he makes choices and decides to
what extent literalness is possible and advisable. However, in theatre
translation, more important than being literal, for me, is trying to be faithful
to the spirit of the play, of the scene, of the word.
I would like to finish this excursus on the subject of translation by
writing a few words on a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream by the
Elfo company, a well-known company based in Milan. Their Sogno di una
notte di mezza estate has become a cult on the Milanese stage; the first
version dates back to the 1980s, after which three more followed. There are
differences among the four versions, but the scene of the mechanicals has
always remained the same. The director, Elio De Capitani, made a rather
extreme choice: he deleted parts of the original text and added some lines
and puns of his own. For some people this is anathema, but I do not agree
because, in my opinion, De Capitani kept the ‘theatrical energy’ of this
scene which, in Shakespeare’s time, would have aroused laughter in the
audience. De Capitani’s rendering may be somewhat exaggerated, but
certainly it makes people laugh and, as in the original, it is very much
focused on the misunderstanding of words among the characters, in
particular between Quince and Bottom. I think that, on the stage, this
conveys the physical reality of the original text better than a more literal
translation. Once again I want to stress that the subject of translation is a
complex one. I have investigated it partially in this section, focusing on the
work done by Strehler and Lombardo and trying to offer a few personal
thoughts.
154
Déprats, ‘Translating Shakespeare’s Stagecraft’, pp. 144-145.
184
**********
When considering the staging of a play, a question comes to mind: is
the staging a means by which the playtext becomes theatrical action, or is it
an autonomous creation which, among other elements, needs the text to
come to life? In the second case we would speak of ‘scenic writing’, thus
implying that the staging acquires dramaturgical characteristics and the
director, the creator of the staging, becomes the ‘author’ of the new
artwork.155 There is no single answer to the question. Different directors
make different choices. Good theatre can be a production that, as far as
possible, follows the cues contained in the playtext, or one that uses it as a
source of inspiration to create something new. Yet, even in the case of a
director like Strehler, whose main wish was that of restoring Shakespeare’s
original texts, his interpretation was inevitably filtered through the lens of
his sensitivity, of his personality, and of the historical time in which he
lived. Therefore, the audience of La Tempesta directed by Strehler did not
see Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but Strehler’s interpretation of the playtext.
Bene – to whom I will dedicate a section of chapter 4 of my thesis – said:
‘Io sono Shakespeare’ (‘I am Shakespeare’)156. Bene was a narcissist and a
self-centred man but, by this phrase, he meant that what a director can offer
when he stages Shakespeare’s plays is Shakespeare as he interprets him and
his work, that is by replacing Shakespeare’s sensitivity, knowledge and
historical background with his own. Paradoxically – we could say – by
becoming him.
Directing in Italy was born primarily as a reaction to the substantial
alterations of the texts made by the Great Actors. Truthfulness to the text
was the first directors’ main aim. Therefore, in theory at least, they deprived
155
I will write extensively about ‘scenic writing’ in the next chapter.
Quoted in Enrico Baiardo and Roberto Trovato, Un classico del rifacimento: l’Amleto di
Carmelo Bene, p. 21.
185
156
themselves of artistic qualities. This is how Strehler expressed these
thoughts:
Nel teatro esiste un solo artista: l’autore del testo drammatico. Esiste
una sola vocazione: quella del poeta. Esiste una sola realtà
drammatica: il testo. Tutto il resto – il complesso spettacolare, questo
complesso non sostituibile, fondamentale perché il teatro si crei ed il
testo non resti letteratura – è un problema di ‘mestiere’, non più di
arte.157
In theatre there is only one artist: the author of the dramatic text.
There is only one vocation: that of the poet. There is only one
dramatic reality: the text. All the rest – the spectacle, the staging that
is irreplaceable, and fundamental to the creation of theatre and to
prevent the text from remaining literature – is a ‘job’, not itself an art.
Strehler as the servant of the poet, he seems to say. But he also affirmed
that:
L’interpretazione di un’opera di teatro è – per me – un’operazione
fondamentalmente critica (e per ‘critica’ sarebbe ora (...) di finire di
considerarla solo (...) lo studio pedante di un testo e non accettare
invece il termine di critica come implicante anche una larga misura di
intuizioni, di slancio emotivo, di amorevole rapporto del cuore (...).)158
The interpretation of a work of theatre is – for me – a fundamentally
critical operation (and by ‘critical’, the time has come (...) to stop
considering it only (...) the pedantic study of the text, and not
accepting the definition of criticism as also implying the notion of
intuition, of emotional impulse, of the loving relationship of the heart
(...).)
157
158
Strehler, Per un teatro umano, p. 162.
Strehler, Shakespeare, Goldoni, Brecht, p. 16.
186
In the second quote Strehler gives a clear definition of critical
directing which, according to Alonge: ‘legge e interpretata con sensibilità e
intelligenza (e fervore politico di sinistra) i testi della drammaturgia
tradizionale’ (‘reads and interprets the texts of traditional dramaturgy with
sensitivity and intelligence [and with left-wing fervour]’).159 Strehler was
certainly well aware of the director’s responsibility, as it is through the
director’s work that an audience not familiar with the play gets knowledge
of a text or of a playwright; however, he also knew well that directing is not
the simple transference of a text from the page to the stage, nor the simple
philological interpretation of the words; it implies the director’s creativity.
Creativity, ‘intuition’, ‘emotional impulse’, ‘loving relationship of the heart’
– along with the thorough study of the text – are the individual qualities that
lead each director to offer his own interpretation of Shakespeare’s words
and that led Shakespeare himself to rearrange already-existing materials in
his own personal way.
Everything I have written so far is as valid today as it was in the
years preceding and following the Second World War when directing was
born in Italy. Not much has changed in terms of directing either in Italy or
in other countries. Certainly there have been variations; there have been
experimentations, there has been a return to the actor’s theatre in Italy in the
mid-1960s of which I will write extensively in chapter 4, but directing as it
was intended by Strehler and by the other first directors has not really
changed since. Therefore, it is not easy for us to understand how innovative
those ideas were when men like Strehler, Squarzina, or Visconti directed
their first plays. The work that Strehler did in order to explore
Shakespeare’s plays from a textual and critical point of view, working side
by side with translators and critics, allowed him to stage productions that
encompassed all the elements of the text in an organic and harmonious
unity. The Great Actors filled the stage with their mere presence, with their
words and with their gestures and, therefore, offered memorable
interpretations of some of Shakespeare’s characters to the detriment of the
159
Alonge, Il teatro dei registi, p. 119.
187
play as a whole. Strehler offered stagings of Shakespeare’s plays that
considered the play in its entirety, building a coherent system of images
corresponding to his interpretation of the text. His work on The Tempest still
ranks among the best productions of a Shakespeare play in Italy and beyond.
In a review by Michael Billington of Trevor Nunn’s already-mentioned
production of The Tempest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London
(from 27th August to 29th October 2011), the critic still refers to Strehler’s –
along with Brook’s and Jonathan Miller’s – affirming that Nunn’s work did
not offer any startling revelations as those had already done.160
I wish to conclude with Lombardo’s words:
(...) illuminando come nessun altro prima di lui aveva fatto molti
aspetti dell’arte shakespeariana, il suo [riferito a Strehler] lavoro si
configura come un momento decisivo, punto d’arrivo e insieme di
partenza, dell’intera esperienza italiana. Senza Strehler, invero, il
rapporto italiano con Shakespeare sarebbe stato assai più povero, e
non soltanto sul palcoscenico.161
(...) giving light as no one had done before him to Shakespeare’s art,
[Strehler’s] work constitutes the decisive moment, arrival and also
starting point, of the entire Italian experience. Without Strehler,
indeed, the Italian relationship with Shakespeare would have been
much poorer, and not only on the stage.
After the writer (Manzoni), the composer (Verdi), the actors (Rossi,
Salvini, and Ristori), it is now a director who gives a fundamental
contribution to reveal new aspects of Shakespeare’s art and to make them
known to a wide public. As I pointed out in the introduction, the story I am
telling is a story of love for the English playwright, a story that – in the
course of time – has taken different and varied ways to write itself.
Certainly, the work that the protagonists of what is now called the Nuovo
160
161
Michael Billington, ‘The Tempest’ - Review, The Guardian, 7 September 2011.
Lombardo, Strehler e Shakespeare, p. 11.
188
Teatro (New Theatre) did with Shakespeare’s texts, constitutes another
significant piece of this story, and will be the content of the fourth chapter
of my journey.
189
4. Shakespeare in the New Theatre (1959-1998)
The staging of Shakespeare’s plays according to the intentions and
modes of the director’s theatre was strictly connected to the birth and the
development of the civic public theatres in Italy. Very different mises-enscène, that can be included in what came to be known as the New Theatre,
and whose beginnings date back to the end of the 1950s, developed in
alternative spaces – especially in the so-called Roman cantine (cellars) –
completely separate from the circuit of the official theatre. The Roman
cantine were underground venues, spaces like garages, basements, old
warehouses, where young artists researched new forms of theatre and
experimented with them. They were self-financed groups, whose main
interest was to have a place where they could carry out a theatrical project
that departed from the rules and conventions of mainstream theatre.
In the first section of this chapter I will focus on the birth and
development of these new groups, and will give a general overview of their
ideas and of their first stagings. I will also show how to a new kind of
theatre corresponded a new idea of criticism, and how this second theatrical
revolution (after the revolution of the directors) was supported by a group of
dissident critics. I will finish the first section of the chapter illustrating the
steps that led to the organization of the Convegno di Ivrea, where theatre
practitioners, critics, and various artists met to discuss their objectives and
achievements. In the second and third section of the chapter I will deal with
stagings of Shakespeare’s plays by two of the protagonists of the Convegno
di Ivrea: de Berardinis and Bene. Distancing themselves from the idea of the
director and the actor as faithful interpreters of Shakespeare’s texts, they
claimed the autonomy of the staging from playwriting and, though in very
different forms, fostered a return to the actor’s theatre.
**********
190
4.1 The New Theatre
In 1970 director Mario Ricci presented his Re Lear da un’idea di
gran teatro di William Shakespeare at the festival for experimental
companies organized within the Venice Biennale Featival.1 The production
was very well received, and can be considered as the point of arrival of a
long process of transformation of theatre that had begun at the end of the
1950s and that, besides Ricci, had involved many other young theatre
practitioners.2 The first unusual thing about this production was the fact that,
when rehearsal started, the title was the only thing that was known to the
actors. There was no script for them, and there were no production notes, as
the show had to be created on the stage. Ricci’s theatre was a kind of
laboratory, where all the members of the company shared in the various
phases of the staging. Isabella Imperiali hints at the all-encompassing role of
the actors who were expected to create their theatre and be carpenters,
tailors, and makeup artists. And she reports Ricci’s own words:
nella fase di costruzione e realizzazione dell’oggetto si arriva a
capirlo, a conoscerlo nella sua dinamica e quindi a sapere quello che
quell’oggetto può fare e come lo si può muovere.3
While building and creating an object you get to understand it, to
know it in its dynamics, and to know what that object can do and how
you can move it.
Of Shakespeare’s plot only the nucleus remained, what for Ricci were
the fundamental moments – the division of the reign, the battle, and death –
whose atmosphere he wanted to re-create. He did not see King Lear as a
1
Ricci (born in 1932) was a painter and a sculptor before engaging himself with theatre. He
returned to Italy in 1962 after living in Paris and in Stockholm, where he worked with
Michael Meschke’s Marionetteater.
2
A detailed analysis of the production can be found in Sonia Bellavia, L’ombra di Lear: il
‘Re Lear’ di Shakespeare e il Teatro Italiano (1858-1885), pp. 242-259. I have relied on
her analysis for my discussion.
3
Isabella Imperiali, ‘Shakespeare e l’avanguardia in Italia’, in Studi Inglesi (Baria:
Adriatica, 1975), 425-463 (p. 451).
191
text, but as a ‘poetical intuition’,4 which he wanted to transform into images
on the stage, reducing it to the minimum. The actors moved on the stage like
puppets, and the lines from Shakespeare’s text (or what remained of them,
as the production was only one hour and fifteen minutes long) were
delivered through a tape-recorder. Ricci also made use of cinema, but he did
not use a screen. The actors, wearing white robes, placed themselves in a
line, so as to create a kind of cinema screen, on which images of the
rehearsals of the play were projected. The metatheatrical quality was also
achieved through the use of a toy theatre, that was brought onto the stage by
Lear, where a part of the tragedy took place. The destruction of the theatre
marked the beginning of Lear’s madness. At this point the noise of the
tempest started. The roar of the sea and the blowing of the wind were
rhythmically accompanied by Lear, hitting a hammer on an anvil. At the
same time images of girls, imitating the gestures and facial expression of
lunatics, were shown on the ‘screen’. In the last scene the characters played
a game called schiacciaquindici (press fifteen). On eight of the fifteen
squares that were assembled at the back of the stage, parts of Lear’s body
were drawn. The king tried in vain to re-create his image, but when he had
nearly finished his drawing, this was erased by the other characters, an act
symbolizing Lear’s death. Ricci’s aim was not that of telling the story of
King Lear (although he said that the audience were able to understand it),
but to show signs on the stage, which it was the audience’s task to interpret.
The text was no longer the ‘protagonist’, but became just one of the
elements of the production. Similarly, the actors lost their dominant role and
were reduced to being some kind of puppets. The production was one of the
best achievements of the so-called New Theatre, a kind of theatre which was
born primarily in opposition to the director’s theatre.
In La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia Daniela Visone traces the
birth of the New Theatre in the year 1959, when three plays were put on
stage in Rome: Beckett’s Aspettando Godot (Waiting for Godot) directed by
Carlo Quartucci; Camus’s Caligola (Caligula) by Alberto Ruggiero, in
4
Ibid., p. 252.
192
which Bene made his debut as an actor; and Ruzante’s La Moscheta by
Claudio Remondi.5 Quartucci, Remondi and – most of all – Bene would
soon become some of the protagonists of the Italian theatrical renewal of the
1960s.6 Although these three figures were very different in their training and
in their ideas about the staging of a play, they certainly shared in the desire
to oppose institutional theatre (by which I mean publicly funded theatres
and their artistic choices), and to explore new ways of dealing with a
playtext – when they used one! Visone remarks that phenomena of a
theatrical revolution also took place outside Italy in the same year: in Poland
Jerzy Grotowski set up his Teatr 13 Rzedov renamed Teatr Laboratorium in
1965; Tadeus Kantor published the theoretical manifesto The Informal
Theatre; the Living Theatre opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New
York, where, in June, they premièred The Connection; Ronnie Davis
founded the San Francisco Mime Troupe; and painter Allan Kaprov
presented the first happening at the Reuben Gallery of New York.7 As for
the Italian stage, in the introduction to Visone’s book, Lorenzo Mango
points out two other significant years: 1965, when the intenzione
drammatica (dramatic intention) of the first experimental attempts became
clear; and 1967, the year of the Convegno di Ivrea, when a number of artists
– mainly theatre people but not exclusively – and critics met with the aim to
gather the various theatrical experiences that, on an individual basis, had
been developed in the previous years, and tried to shape them into a proper
movement.8
5
Visone, La Nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia: 1959-1967, p. 19. It is interesting to notice
that the first two plays were recent: Waiting for Godot was written in French between 1948
and 1949 and premièred in Paris on 5 January 1953, while the English-language première
was on 3 August 1955. Caligula was begun in 1938 and was first performed in 1945. La
Moscheta, instead, was written in 1529.
6
Quartucci (born in 1938) is Sicilian; he moved to Rome where he attended university and
he staged his Aspettando Godot with some fellow students. Remondi (born in 1927) was
not linked to the academic world. He was self-taught; he saw all the important plays staged
in Rome and read about theatre. Bene (1937-2002) was an actor, director and screenwriter.
He is now considered one of the most versatile artists of the world theatre history. The third
section of this chapter is dedicated to him and to his engagement with Shakespeare’s plays.
7
Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 25.
8
Ibid., pp. 17-18.
193
But what was the New Theatre, and what were the causes that led to
attempt a complete renewal of theatre in Italy? After the theatrical
revolution led by the first Italian directors – Strehler in particular – at the
end of World War Two, which meant the shift of the Italian theatre from the
actor’s to the director’s theatre, gradually the innovative impulse slowed
down until it came to a standstill. Great productions could still be seen, but
research and experimentation in terms of playwriting and of staging were
almost completely neglected. This was due to various factors: a lack of
generational turnover at the head of the Italian public theatres, with the
artistic directors well anchored in their positions; the policy of state
subsidies given according to the extent to which theatres complied with the
ideologies of the government, which made it safer not to risk staging texts
that were too challenging for the establishment; and a slump in the sale of
tickets, mainly due to competition coming from television, that made
economic and organizational problems a priority, thus neglecting the artistic
requests of directors, authors, and actors.9 Therefore, the renewal, or the
attempt at a renewal, developed far from the official theatre circuit. The
protagonists were a group of very young artists who did not identify
themselves with the reality, the policy, or the artistic choices of the public
theatres, and completely relied on their scarce financial possibilities to stage
their plays. They were not born as a movement. They experimented in
different ways and often they did not know one another. It would be too
long and not relevant to the purpose of my research to analyse their work in
detail, but I will try to highlight some trends of their investigation within a
wider context of international experimentation, in order to have the
necessary tools to analyse the most important Shakespearian productions of
the Italian New Theatre.
The starting point of their research was certainly opposition to the
director’s theatre. As I have extensively illustrated in the previous chapter,
directing, as it had been intended by the first Italian directors after World
War Two, was the instrument to give dignity to the playtexts after they had
9
De Marinis, Il Nuovo Teatro: 1947-1970, p. 152.
194
been severely cut and altered by the Great Actors. Therefore, directing was
aimed to interpret the texts in their entirety, and to give them scenic form on
the stage. Strehler considered himself at the service of the text, and a
commitment to authenticity was his main aim, as he believed that the word
was predominant over all the other elements that make a staging. That is the
first assumption that was questioned by the young artists. In place of a very
precise hierarchy at the top of which was the word, the New Theatre
fostered a horizontal structure in which word – in terms of written text –,
acting, scenic space, objects and props, music, costumes, and lights have the
same relevance, and should all be part of what critic Giuseppe Bartolucci,
years later, defined as ‘scenic writing’, which also became the title of a
book.10 Analysing the two words it can be understood that they were in
opposition to the idea of playwriting, the writing of a text, transformed into
theatrical action at a later time. Scenic writing, instead, does not make any
distinction between text and staging; indeed, it does not necessarily imply
the presence of a text. As Visone puts it:
Si tratta di un termine vitale per leggere i nuovi spettacoli, costituiti da
un’organizzazione di segni ‘materiali’ indipendente dalla presenza di
un testo.11
It is a vital term to read the new performances, constituted by an
organization of ‘material’ signs, independent of the presence of a text.
Thus, the performance as a narration was no longer needed. It was
not the development of a story that counted, but the presence of the material
signs on the stage. Far from being the tools to interpret a text and to transmit
it to the audience, the signs acquired their meaning from their own existence
10
Giuseppe Bartolucci (1923-1996) was an essayist and theatre critic. His role in the
development of the New Theatre was fundamental; he was an acute observer who,
differently from the great majority of Italian critics in that period, supported the enterprises
of the young artists and contributed significantly to spread their ideas; he was also one of
the promoters of the Ivrea conference. The book I mentioned is: Bartolucci, La scrittura
scenica.
11
Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 43.
195
and in the relationships that they established with one another. In other
words, they should be considered in their semiological quality, as signifiers
and not as signified. The absence of a narrative logic, even if in the presence
of a text, makes the understanding of the performance more ambiguous; but
it was not ambiguity that the exponents of the New Theatre were looking
for. They wanted their productions to encourage different reactions in the
audience and to be open to different interpretations. A few years later
Umberto Eco used the phrase ‘opera aperta’ (‘open work’) in his book
Opera aperta, in which he maintains that:
(...) un’opera d’arte, forma compiuta e chiusa nella sua perfezione di
organismo perfettamente calibrato, è altresì aperta, possibilità di
essere interpretata in mille modi diversi senza che la sua
irriproducibile singolarità ne risulti alterata.12
(...) an artwork, complete and sealed in its perfection as a perfectly
balanced organism, is also open, as it can be interpreted in a thousand
different ways without its irreproducible individuality being altered.
Undoubtedly it is as open structures that Quartucci, Bene, Ricci and Leo de
Berardinis saw their shows.13 In the case of Quartucci and Ricci, at least, the
two directors wanted to encourage the audience to be active and to reflect
upon the signs that they saw on the stage. It seems just the opposite of the
aim of directors like Strehler. Far from acting as facilitators between the text
and the audience, these young men stepped out of a priest-like role for the
director who explains, and preferred to show, in order to give the audience
the possibility of freely interpreting the performances. They did not tell a
story, but they showed signs. This tendency was particularly evident in the
work of Ricci, in whose first very visual stagings he did not even include the
presence of the actor. In doing so he showed strong links to the Futurist
12
Umberto Eco, Opera aperta (Milano: Bompiani, 1962), p. 34. Author’s emphases.
De Berardinis (1939-2008) was an actor and director. He became one of the most
important representatives of the Italian experimental theatre. He worked extensively with
Shakespeare’s plays, some of which I will deal with in the second section of this chapter.
196
13
theatre and to the scenic revolution of Enrico Prampolini who, starting from
Craig’s idea of the Über-marionette, went even further excluding not only
the actor, but also the puppet.14 Considering theatre as a work of art, ‘which
neither pretended to be, nor aimed to be an imitation of life’,15 Craig saw the
actor as an obstacle, which he wanted to substitute with the Übermarionette, ‘a figure that surpasses the puppet in beauty and expressivity –
not an imitation of man but the symbol of man, and its role is to convey
eternal, spiritual values’.16 Instead Ricci’s first productions were a display
of objects and a study of the relations existing among them. Only with his
Varietà (Variety), staged in 1965, did he introduce the figure of the actor.
Yet the actor became an object, devoid of any psychological
characterization, and whose movements and gestures were very stylized and
geometrical.
Fundamental for the protagonists of the theatrical renewal was also
the elimination of the separation between stage and audience. In opposition
to the idea of a division of the theatre in two, the New Theatre sought a
much closer contact between actors and spectators, an element that was
present from the beginning. Quartucci, Remondi, and Ricci worked on
various possibilities to eliminate the invisible wall that separates the stage
from the audience, with the objective of a direct participation of the latter in
the development of the performance. Such practices also characterized the
performances staged by the Living Theatre. Yet, as De Marinis rightly
points out, we cannot speak of an influence of the American group on the
beginnings of Italian experimental theatre, as the Living Theatre’s first
stagings date back to 1959, and they came to Italy for the first time in
14
Enrico Prampolini (1894-1956) was an Italian painter, sculptor and scenographer, who,
with his antinaturalistic stage settings, played an important role within the theatrical
revolution advocated by the Futurists. Edward Gordon Craig (1862-1966) was an English
modernist theatre practitioner, who worked as an actor, director and scenic designer, and
wrote a number of essays on theatre.
15
Irène Eynat (1980) ‘Gordon Craig, the Über-marionette, and the Dresden Theatre’,
Theatre Research International, 5.3 (1980) 171-193 (pp. 177-178).
16
Ibid.
197
1961.17 However, from 1961, the Italian experimental theatre acquired a
more European and extra-European dimension. The arrival of the Living
Theatre was not a success with the public, but surely did not go unnoticed
by the critics, and also represented a vehicle to introduce Artaud’s ideas on
the Theatre of Cruelty in Italy. Moreover, from 1962 circulation of essays
on the European theatre began.18
The idea of involving the audience in the development of the
performance takes us back to Shakespeare’s time. The elimination of the
fourth wall comes precisely from that tradition. Elizabethan theatre practices
were certainly known to the Italian experimentalists, as will be clear from
some statements by de Berardinis and Bene which I will discuss in the next
two sections of the chapter. Today the arrangement of the so-called teatro
all’italiana and of most theatres in Italy and outside Italy makes the
experience of watching a play quite passive, contrary to what the members
of the New Theatre wished and to the experience of theatre-going in
Shakespeare’s times, when actors and audience shared the same space.19
This allowed a close relationship between performers and spectators with
the former often involving the latter in the performance itself. In A Short
History of English Renaissance Drama Hackett quotes from The Tempest
where ‘Prospero turns a masque within the play into a metaphor for the
evanescence of human existence, and then looks outward with selfconscious irony to the Globe playhouse as a microcosm of the whole world
in its mutability and mortality’:20
Like the baseless fabric of this vision –
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
17
On 13 and 14 June 1961, they presented The Connection by Jack Gelber and Many Loves
by William Carlos Williams at Rome Teatro Club. De Marinis, Il NuovoTeatro, p. 161.
18
Visone mentions, for example, Ferruccio Marotti’s essay on Gordon Craig, ‘Gordon
Craig’, in Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 35.
19
The teatro all’italiana is constructed in the shape of a horseshoe or rounded auditorium
in several tiers facing the stage, from which it is divided by an arch – the proscenium –
which supports the curtain.
20
Helen Hackett, A Short History of English Renaissance Drama (London: I. B. Tauris,
2013), p. 98.
198
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind (4.1.151-156).21
Prospero addresses the audience directly and, in doing so, makes the
audience not just witnesses of the events unravelling in front of them, but
also sharers in the events to make a life experience. Similar approaches were
advocated by the experimentalists of the 1960s. In their case, the
involvement of the audience in the performance also had a political
underpinning. It was a clear challenge to the director’s theatre, in which the
audience were passive recipients of the ‘truth’ provided by the director. On
the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that the experimental research of the
end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s with its antinaturalistic staging
did not make understanding easy. As a matter of fact, in most cases, the
productions were followed by a number of experts, who knew well what
they were going to see. The cantine were clubs that required the visitors to
be members, thus becoming cultural circles mainly attended by intellectuals.
It was in the second half of the 1960s that Italian theatre really became
socially and politically oriented. In particular, we can mention the work of
Dario Fo (born 1926) who, in 1968, founded a theatrical movement of the
revolutionary left called La Comunità (The Community). This movement
supported students and activists in many cities and its performances were
‘actual political manifestations, including speeches, debates and passing the
hat for incarcerated comrades’.22 Also the work of Quartucci became much
more socially and politically oriented, and community theatres were created
in many parts of the Italian peninsula.
The experimentations of the young artists did not go unnoticed by
some critics, Giuseppe Bartolucci and Franco Quadri in particular, who
21 Ibid.
22 Mario Prosperi, ‘Contemporary Italian Theatre’, The Drama Review: TDR, 22, 1, Italian
Theatre Issue (Mar.1978), 17-32 (p. 28).
199
realized that something new was happening in the panorama of Italian
theatre.23 Although they knew that much of the work was still immature,
they believed that such tendencies contained the seeds of a renewal of
Italian theatre; therefore, they became strenuous supporters of the new
trends, and worked to give them a theoretical dimension. For example, after
the meeting among poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and critics belonging
to the Gruppo 63 that took place in Palermo from the third to the eighth
October 1963, Bartolucci pointed out the difference existing between this
group and their theatrical experimentation, based on verbal subversion, and
the theatrical experiments carried out by men like Quartucci and Ricci. The
theatre of the Gruppo 63 was characterised by the pre-eminence of the word
(disintegrated and demoted), while the interest of the latter lay primarily not
in the subversion of words, but in the creation of a completely new scenic
language that would be specifically theatrical.24 Comparing Giorgio
Manganelli’s Iperipotesi (Hyperhypotheses) with any of Ricci’s works, for
example, will help understand what Bartolucci means. Manganelli’s
Iperipotesi was one of the 11 one-act plays that were presented in
Palermo.25 There is only one character, a lecturer who addresses the public.
There is no scenery. In fact the curtain is not even raised. The play is just a
monologue given by the lecturer, which starts:
Signori e signore, l’importante è proporre delle ipotesi. Nessuna
attività è più nobile di questa, più degna dell’uomo. In primo luogo,
in qualsivoglia condizione, senza pausa elaborare ipotesi; in secondo
luogo, confortarle di documenti, indizi, argomenti, fenomeni,
23 Franco Quadri (1936-2011) was Italy’s most influential theatre critic. He was also a
publisher, translator, and essayist. As we will see, he played a fundamental role in the
promotion of the New Theatre in Italy.
24
Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 40.
25
The list of the plays can be found in Gruppo 63: l’Antologia, ed. Nanni Balestrini and
Alfredo Giuliani (Torino: Testo & Immagine: 2002), 260-262 (p. 260). Giorgio Manganelli
(1922-1990) was a journalist, writer, translator, and literary critic. He translated Edgar
Allan Poe’s complete stories and authors like T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Robert Louis
Stevenson, George Gordon Byron, and others. He was one of the best-known
neoavanguardisti, and a member of Gruppo 63, although he thought of himself as an
outsider.
200
epifenomei (...). Ipotizzare è sano, relaxing (...) è un’attività euforica
ed euforizzante, da week-end, come fondare religioni, concepire
generali, merendare con consanguinei (...) .26
Ladies and Gentlemen, the important thing is to suggest hypotheses.
No other activity is nobler, worthier of man than this. Firstly, in
whatever condition, with no pause, [it is important] to formulate
hypotheses; secondly, [it is important] to support them with
documents, clues, arguments, phenomena, epiphenomena (...).
Speculating is healthy, relaxing (...) it is an inspiring and inspired
activity, a weekend activity, like founding religions, conceiving
generals, having a snack with blood relations (...) .
The monologue is long (three pages in the anthology) and is only
interrupted by various noises, like the sound of other voices, gunshots, the
noise of rain, whistles, and so on. On the other hand Ricci’s first stagings
did not include any human presence or any form of spoken word.
Movimento 1 e 2 (Movement 1 and 2) was a performance (we could also
define it as a sketch) that lasted thirty minutes, whose ‘protagonists’ were
six little papier-mâché men’s heads, that recalled De Chirico’s mannequins.
The little heads were aligned at the back of the stage. Another little head, a
woman’s, was placed in front of the others. The heads were held by an
invisible black thread that lifted them in order to make them turn. Visone
gives a detailed description of this production, but I do not think I need to
go into details in order to highlight the difference between these two
‘experiments’.27 If in the first case the protagonists of the sketch were still
words interpolated with sounds, in the second Ricci does without words at
all, as his only interest was that of offering to the public a series of images
to decode. Yet, even within the context of the New Theatre, Bartolucci
highlighted the presence of two different directorial trends: a more moderate
one to which Quartucci belonged, where the starting point of the
26
27
Giorgio Manganelli, ‘Iperipotesi’, in Gruppo 63: l’Antologia, pp. 260-262 (p. 260).
Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, pp. 48-49.
201
experimentation was still the text, and a more radical one – of which Ricci,
Bene and de Berardinis, though with very different modes, became the
major representatives – that replaced the binomial playwriting and staging,
with a unique writing, the scenic writing.28
The discussion about the New Theatre was conducted on the pages
of the theatre magazine Sipario (Curtain), of which Quadri became editor in
1962.29 The magazine followed the development of the New Theatre
closely, and also became a vehicle to spread ideas coming from abroad into
Italy. In particular, between 1964 and 1965, it published a number of articles
on Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and on various theatrical phenomena that
showed signs of his influence, like the work of Peter Brook, Jean Genet,
Jerzy Grotowski, the Living Theatre – as I said before – , and the
Happening. The ideas that Artaud had expressed in his Le Théâtre et son
Double (The Theatre and Its Double), published in 1938, but which he had
not put into practice, were applied, decades later, both in Europe and in
America, and were also traceable in the work of the Italian
experimentalists.30 In 1966 the first conference on the work of Artaud took
place at the Parma XIV Festival Universitario (University Festival). Among
the scholars and theatre men invited to the conference was Jacques Derrida,
who, for the first time, tried to codify the Theatre of Cruelty. His speech can
be summarized as follows. Firstly, the Theatre of Cruelty is inclusive of all
forms of art, and of everything which constitutes or is characteristic of art in
general; therefore, music, dance, visual, sonic images, volume, depth, are all
present on the stage. Secondly, the theatre of Cruelty does not give preeminence to the word over the other components of the staging. Thirdly, in
the Theatre of Cruelty the audience, far from just witnessing the theatrical
event, joins in the artistic creation.31 The link between Artaud and what I
have been saying so far about the Italian New Theatre is clear.
28
Ibid., p. 43.
Also Bartolucci became a constant presence on the pages of the magazine with his
articles and his various surveys on the state of the Italian theatre.
30
Artaud’s Il teatro e il suo doppio was published in Italy by Einaudi in 1968.
31
In Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 62.
202
29
Besides hosting the discussion about the New Theatre, Sipario also
hosted the discussion about a New Criticism. Men like Bartolucci and
Quadri, but also Corrado Augias, Ettore Capriolo and Edoardo Fadini,32
believed that critics should acquire the necessary technical tools to be able
to understand the new theatrical trends, and make them clear to the
audience. In the issues of March, April and June 1967 the magazine
published a survey, conducted by Bartolucci, entitled ‘Situazione della
critica’ (‘The Situation of Criticism’),33 where foreign and Italian critics
were interviewed and expressed their ideas on the current situation of
theatre criticism and on the skills that a critic of the New Theatre should
have. Reading the various interviews a big difference between the role of
critics in England and in Italy stands out. As Martin Esslin points out,
theatre criticism in England in the 1960s was the natural continuation of
what it had been since the beginning of the twentieth century. 34 Critics like
Max Beerbohm or Bernard Shaw and, later on, Kenneth Tynan and Harold
Hobson, were unwilling to remain neutral, and wanted to fight in favour of
certain playwrights in order to bring them to the attention of the public. It
was Tynan, Esslin affirms, who made authors like John Osborne, Harold
Wesker, and John Arden known to the public, or who defended Brecht,
Genêt and Beckett when people still mistrusted them. In France, Bernard
Dort distinguished between the play as a text on the one hand, and in terms
of its staging on the other.35 The theatre critic, he says in the interview,
cannot refer to the first; his role is that of expressing his judgement on the
32
Corrado Augias (born in 1935) is a very well known journalist, writer, critic and TV host;
Ettore Capriolo (born in 1926) is an expert in English literature and translator (he was
stabbed in 1991 by an Iranian for translating Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses);
Edoardo Fadini was for many years theatre critic for the Italian paper L’Unità, and founder,
in 1975, of Cabaret Voltaire in Turin, a theatrical space that was open until 1994 (it then
changed its name into Orsa: Organizzazione per la Ricerca in Scienze e Arti) and hosted
various Italian and foreign avant-garde artists and groups, like Bene and the American
Living Theatre.
33
‘Situazione della critica’ (1): interviste e testimonianze di critici drammatici stranieri’ ed.
Giuseppe Bartolucci, Sipario, 251 (March 1967), 2-8; ‘Situazione della critica (2): inchiesta
tra i critici italiani, Sipario, 252 (April 1967), 1-12; ‘Situazione della critica (3): interviene
Alberto Arbasino, Sipario, 254 (June 1967), 3-4.
34
‘Situazione della critica (1)’, p. 2.
35
Ibid., p. 4.
203
second. Given this preliminary statement, the critic must be well acquainted
with all the elements that contribute to the transformation of a written text
into physicality on the stage. In other words, the critic must have the
necessary skills to judge not only the text and the acting, but also the
directing, the stage setting, the music, and so on. However, from his words
we infer that in France the great majority of critics still did what he calls
‘critica impressionistica’ (‘impressionistic criticism’), which is easier and
relies on the impression that a critic gets from watching a performance,
rather than on the technical knowledge of the scenic writing.36
In the second and third part of the survey, a number of Italian critics
were interviewed. Among them, Alberto Arbasino maintained that very few
Italian critics were ready to open up to the most recent theatrical forms in
the 1960s. According to him, the problem lay in the fact that criticism
should not be considered a permanent job: Shaw, Beerbohm, Tynan, and
Robert Brustein, he says, had never seen this as a life-long career, whereas
most critics in Italy did.37 Therefore, it was easier not to risk trying to
impose new texts, or new directors, and to maintain the status quo instead.
Forse l’inconveniente italiano è nel ‘sistema’. Cioè nel considerare la
‘posizione’ di critico come un cadreghino fisso e non come una
situazione di passaggio.38
Maybe the Italian obstacle lies in the ‘system’. That is in considering
the ‘position’ of the critic as a permanent job, and not as a temporary
situation.
The same problems that afflicted the great public theatres seemed to
afflict criticism, but the main complaint that critics like Bartolucci and
36
Ibid., p. 5. The survey ‘Situazione della critica (1)’ also contains interviews to American
and German critics, which would be too long to analyze here.
37
We should also remark that in several of these cases they were also creatively involved in
theatre as playwrights, and Tynan was literary manager of the National Theatre.
38
‘Situazionedella critica (3)’, p. 4.
204
Capriolo made was the lack of preparation of most critics.39 They give
account of the fact that in the past 20 years, theatre had developed thanks to
the dedication of directors, certainly not of critics, and apparently the
situation was not very dissimilar in the 1960s. The contribution of a critic
cannot be limited to registering what occurs on the stage, but should also
include collaborating actively to change and modernize it. In order to
accomplish this task, critics should be well aware of the development of
theatres in foreign countries, follow the new tendencies in their own, and
acquire the necessary tools to understand them and make them accessible to
the audience. It was not possible to review a performance according to the
rules of the past, that is focusing on the text and on the acting, but with the
capacity to:
Muoversi nello spettacolo con un atteggiamento mentale aperto e
con una conoscenza precisa, sia degli orientamenti che delle tecniche
teatrali in atto (...). Il pubblico (...) disposto a capire lo spettacolo, si
attende questo dalla critica.40
Move through the performance with an open mind and with a precise
knowledge of the current directions and of the theatrical techniques
(...). The audience (...) willing to understand the show, expects this
from criticism.
Indeed, the productions of the Living Theatre, or of directors like Quartucci,
could not be codified according to the parameters of the director’s theatre as
intended by Strehler for example.
In 1965, within the XXIV Festival Internazionale della Prosa (XXIV
International Prose Festival) of Venice, the Living Theatre presented their
production of Frankenstein and Quartucci a play entitled: Zip, Lap Lip Vap
Mam Crep Scap Plip Trip Scrap & la Grande Mam, written by Giuliano
39
40
Bartolucci in ‘Situazione della critica (2)’, pp. 1-3; Capriolo in ibid., pp. 4-5.
Bartolucci in ‘Situazione della critica (2)’, p. 2.
205
Scabia (born 1935).41 In both cases, the idea of the show as the staging of a
text was questioned; the importance of Zip lies in the fact that it can be
considered the most complete example of scenic writing, where the text, the
scenic space, the objects, the sounds, and the actors were fused together and
none of them dominated. The creative process was also new: Scabia wrote a
text beforehand, but then actively collaborated with the director and with the
actors, modifying the text during rehearsals according to the director’s
requests and to the inputs coming from the actors who were encouraged to
use improvisation. In this way, the text developed alongside the staging,
thus creating the scenic writing. The staging of Zip was also a clear example
of the theatre company seen as a community, where all the members share
in and are involved in the various phases of work.
As I wrote before, the idea of theatre as a community, where all the
phases – from the writing of a play to its staging – are shared activities, goes
back in time and characterized Shakespeare’s theatre. The activity of theatre
companies, then, was extremely frantic, as Gurr explains. Players performed
a different play every day and worked six days a week. New plays were
produced at frequent intervals. In 1594-95 the Admiral’s Men at the Rose
offered a repertory of 38 plays, of which 21 were new ones. Some plays
were performed only once, and only a few were put on stage again in the
following season.42 Probably, such a high output of plays was possible
because of the collaborative quality of theatre making. Writing was a
collaborative activity. We tend to think of a play as Shakespeare’s, or
Marlowe’s, or Jonsons’s, but we should be aware of the fact that it was not
common practice for playwrights to work alone. For example, Hackett
draws our attention to Macbeth, and reports Gary Taylor’s opinion,
according to whom Middleton contributed extensively to the text, making
cuts and additions to it. 11 per cent of the text in the First Folio, Taylor
41
Before working with Quartucci, Scabia (born in 1935) wrote the libretto La fabbrica
illuminata (The Illuminated Factory) for Luigi Nono. He became one of the protagonists of
the New Theatre.
42
Gurr, The Shakespearian Stage, p. 103.
206
believes, is by Middleton.43 Even the staging was a collaborative activity.
Roles were conceived to fit the performing styles of the actors, but they
might be altered during rehearsal, in a process in which, similarly to the
staging of Zip, actors were encouraged to improvise and to offer their own
input. Changes on the stage could also be made by the playwright himself,
in a kind of theatre in which the author would also play the role of the
‘director’. This is how Susan Bassnett illustrates the kind of work of actors
at the time of Shakespeare:
The fragmentary written text, such as it was, functioned as a
blueprint on which performers could build from their own
experience. The notion of the fixed playtext, with its detailed stage
directions, with each player’s speech patterns carefully calculated by
the playwright did not at that time exist.44
I have not found sources indicating that Scabia and Quartucci were
knowingly looking back to Elizabethan practices but, as I pointed out
before, there are various references to the theatre at the time of Shakespeare
by de Berardinis and Bene. It is very unlikely, therefore, that reviving
practices similar to those of the early modern playhouses was simply a
coincidence. At the same time, as we will see in the next two sections of this
chapter, these resemblances between original sixteenth-century practices
and New Theatre practices gave origin to very free interpretations of the
playtexts, in a process that was in itself very Shakespearian. In their
opposition to mainstream theatre of the mid-twentieth century, the
protagonists of the New Theatre were also returning to Italian practices of
the past that were lost in the director’s theatre. As a matter of fact,
Bassnett’s quotation could be easily applied to the commedia dell’arte too,
another theatre tradition which certainly inspired these young theatre
practitioners.
43
44
Hackett, A Short History of English Renaissance Drama, p. 68.
Bassnett ‘Translating for the Theatre’, p. 103.
207
Despite all this, the experiment carried out with Zip was rather
unusual for its time. The consequence was that Scabia and Quartucci ran
into various problems during rehearsals: the actors, for example, were not
accustomed to acting without a complete text, and the collaboration among
the various members of the group would have needed a long time to
develop, whereas the company only had twenty-three days to rehearse.
Besides the difficulties that accompanied the staging, most critics did not
welcome the production. Probably they did not understand it or, as De
Marinis puts it, many misoneists used it as a scapegoat to attack the new
avant-garde theatre.45 However, the play certainly marked an important
moment for the development of the New Theatre in Italy.
What fascinates me is the collaboration between an author and a
director. Writing theatre is not the same as writing a novel: it requires
acoustic and auditory perception, an ear for dialogue and for music, and an
awareness of the transformative effects of light and shade, processes that
remain creations of the imagination in prose. Prose writers accompany the
reader on a narrative journey, whereas writing for the theatre is about
confrontation, face-to-face ‘live company’, an interaction rather than intraaction. Given these assumptions, I believe that a collaboration between
authors and directors can be very helpful. Shakespeare was an actor besides
being a playwright. And he wrote for a specific theatre, for a company he
knew and, as I said, designed his roles to fit the particular gifts and aptitudes
of particular actors (e.g. Kempe, Armin, Burbage).46 But in the 1960s the
collaboration between Scabia and Quartucci was an exception.
A heated debate on the relationship between authors and theatre went
on for months in 1965. Once again, it took place on the pages of Sipario. A
survey, entitled ‘Gli scrittori e il teatro’, was published in the May, July and
45
De Marinis, Il Nuovo Teatro, p.167. For a detailed analysis of the play see pp. 162-167;
and Visone, La nascita del NuovoTeatro in Italia, pp. 77-92.
46
Such a practice, like the custom of type-casting parts was necessary as the players
performed a different role every day. (Gurr, The Shakespearian Stage, p. 104).
208
August issues of 1965,47 which was followed by other articles written for
various Italian papers and magazines. The survey stemmed from an Italian
anomaly: while in most European countries there existed a direct
relationship between the most advanced literary experiences and theatre, in
Italy there was a clear separation between intellectuals and the ‘stage’. A
number of well-known and highly regarded writers were interviewed and,
with some exceptions, their attitude towards Italian theatre in general and
the theatre of the 1960s in particular, seemed to be rather arrogant. Most of
them declared that they took no interest in theatre in terms of playwriting –
making an exception for Eduardo De Filippo – and of staging, and that they
rarely, or never, attended theatres. Arbasino, for example, the same
Arbasino who would affirm, one year later, that the critic should be well
acquainted with all the new theatrical trends, stated:
La sola idea che un eventuale copione debba venire esaminato, e
possa subire le osservazioni, d’uno dei nostri attori, o d’uno dei
nostri registi, bastano a riempir l’animo di un raccapriccio così
profondo da indurre a decisioni disperate: non uscir mai dalla
narrativa e dalla saggistica.48
Just the thought that a script must be examined by one of our actors,
or by one of our directors, and may be subject to their objections, is
sufficient to fill our soul with such deep horror that it leads to
desperate decisions: I will never abandon fiction and essay-writing.
And Alberto Moravia added the following opinion about theatre
audiences: ‘Il pubblico del teatro mi sembra stupido e volgare’. 49 (‘Theatre
audiences seem to me to be stupid and vulgar’). I agree with Carlo Bo’s
words: ‘Credo che fra gli intellettuali italiani e il teatro esista un rapporto
47
‘Gli scrittori e il teatro: inchiesta’, ed. Marisa Rusconi, Sipario, 229 (May 1965), 2-14;
‘Gli scrittori e il teatro: rispondono i teatranti’, Sipario, 231 (July 1965), 2-10; Roberto
Rebora, ‘Gli scrittori e il teatro: Contributo alla confusione’, Sipario, 232 (August 1965), 24.
48
‘Gliscrittori e il teatro: inchiesta’, p. 2.
49
Ibid., p. 10.
209
doppio di presunzione e di complesso di inferiorità’.50 (‘I think that between
Italian intellectuals and theatre, exists a mixed relationship of conceit and
inferiority complex’). The consequence of all these prejudices is that very
few of the authors interviewed wrote or write for the theatre. It must also be
accounted for that some of them did not feel they possessed those skills that
I mentioned above.51 However, it is quite clear that, on the side of the
writers, there was an attitude of general resistance to theatre and the
tendency to consider it a lesser form of art, and very often not a cultural
form at all.52 It is not easy to find reasons for this, but something is worth
pointing out, I believe. In Britain there is a tradition of drama and the
creative arts in education that is lacking in Italy. At the time of the New
Theatre, many British schools and universities were active in amateur
extracurricular drama, and this has since developed into the organised
teaching of drama as an academic subject, whereas Italy has never had such
provision. One reason why drama has tended to be an activity (either
extracurricular or curricular) in British schools is simply because of the
central place of Shakespeare in culture and in the education system.
Studying Shakespeare in the classroom, as all British pupils have done for a
hundred years or so, leads to a desire to perform the plays on stage. The
Italian education system, on the contrary, is more academically oriented,
and I think that this accounts for the situation I have been describing.
The same attitude of resistance shown by the writers who accepted to
express their opinions in the survey conducted by Sipario seemed to affect
directors working for the official theatre. From the same survey and from
another survey ‘Inchiesta sui teatri stabili’ (‘Survey on the civic public
theatres’), published in the May 1966 issue of Sipario and conducted by
Bartolucci, it can be inferred that directors usually mistrusted the work of
new playwrights, and preferred to stick to well-known ones, or to the
50
Ibid., p. 5.
See p. 208.
52
Not much seems to have changed in Italy: we can see on our stages plays by Steven
Berkoff, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard, Edward Bond, Mark Ravenhill, and Sarah Kane, but
not many plays by Italian playwrights are available.
210
51
classics.53 Such an attitude of closure does not do any good either to the
writers or to theatre practitioners, I believe. My position is well expressed
by Luciano Codignola’s words:
(...) per fare del teatro non basta né un testo né una compagnia ma ci
vuole qualcosa di più, cioè l’incontro, la fiducia reciproca, la
disponibilità, la collaborazione.54
(...) in order to do theatre, neither a text, nor a company suffices, but
something more is needed, that is, the encounter, the mutual trust,
the willingness, the collaboration.
Therefore, he carries on, on the one hand writers must understand that
writing theatre requires great commitment; on the other, theatre people
cannot ignore literary culture.
The rediscovery of the classics also informed the theatre of the new
experimentalists. But it was the theatre of the Elizabethans, and of
Shakespeare in particular, that fascinated them for reasons that Imperiali
discusses in the already-mentioned essay ‘Shakespeare e l’avanguardia in
Italia’, to which also Visone refers in her discussion of Ricci’s Re Lear da
un’idea di gran teatro di William Shakespeare.55 First of all the protagonists
of the New Theatre recognized an age of dissatisfaction, of insecurity, of
uncertainty, and of anxiety in the Elizabethan Age that characterized their
own age and experience too. Such social instability gave origin, at the end
of the sixteenth century, to an ‘unstable’ kind of theatre, ‘un teatro in
movimento’ (‘a theatre in movement’), characterized by a very free
structure.56 It is this free structure that allowed the theatre practitioners of
the 1960s to be as free, and to modify Shakespeare’s plays, making extreme
choices, and creating new artworks without destroying the sources.
53
‘Inchiesta sui teatri stabili’, Sipario, 241 (May 1966), 70-82.
‘Gliscrittori e il teatro: rispondono i teatranti’, p. 5.
55
Imperiali, ‘Shakespeare e l’avanguardia’, pp. 425-427. Visone L’ombra di Lear, pp. 245246.
56
The idea of ‘a theatre in movement’ is by Capriolo and is quoted in Imperiali
‘Shakespeare e l’avanguardia’, p. 426.
211
54
Secondly, the young experimentalists were attracted by the simple stage sets
of the Elizabethan theatre, which fitted well with their choice of a frugal
theatre in opposition to the opulence of the productions of mainstream
theatre. Simple sets meant that words acquired a strong evocative quality in
Shakespeare’s theatre, with the audience expected to use their imagination
to ‘see’ places, and create images. The young practitioners of the 1960s
filled this gap by transforming words into images. As there is a lot in
Shakespeare’s plays that is only hinted at, they felt entitled to use their own
imagination, and to provide the images that are missing in the texts. Far
from feeling in the wrong they believed that in so doing they were
contributing to the understanding of aspects of Shakespeare’s plays that are
not immediately visible through words. Imperiali concludes this theoretical
discussion affirming that these young men saw Shakespeare’s works as a
resource available to everybody everywhere in the world.57
I will expand on these ideas in my analysis of the theatre of de
Berardinis and Bene. The close reading of their stagings will give a practical
confirmation to the above-mentioned thoughts, and will show how such
approach to Shakespeare’s texts was very similar to Shakespeare’s approach
to the sources he used for his own creations.
4.1.1 A Manifesto for the New Theatre
One year after publication of the survey ‘Gli scrittori e il teatro’, in
November 1966, a manifesto for the New Theatre was published in the 247th
issue of Sipario. The manifesto became the first step in a fascinating journey
undertaken to gather different voices and experiences, and to give shape to a
proper movement. In its final part, the signatories called for a conference,
aimed at bringing together theatre practitioners and theatre critics who
shared the views expressed in the manifesto. In preparation for the
conference, Bartolucci, Quadri, Fadini and Capriolo wrote a document
57
Ibid., p. 427.
212
entitled ‘Elementi di discussione del convegno per un nuovo teatro’
(‘Elements of Discussion of the Conference for a New Theatre’), a very
detailed programme of the various issues for discussion at the conference.
The Convegno di Ivrea, the final step of the journey, was held at Ivrea from
9 to 12 June 1967. It is a story of failures also, but its outcome was the
beginning of an important season for Italian experimental theatre. The
manifesto was written by Bartolucci, Quadri, Fadini, Capriolo, and Augias
with the collaboration of Scabia and Roberto Lerici (1931-1992).58 It is not
by chance that the five critics chose two writers: they believed that Italian
dramaturgy should be renovated and that there was a strong need of new
texts. Moreover, they believed in a close collaboration between authors and
theatre directors, with the authors attending theatres and sharing ideas with
the people that would stage their text. After writing the manifesto, they
invited various people to sign it. They were thinking about a large
movement that would bring together theatre people, critics, musicians,
painters, and film-makers, as they firmly believed that all these arts should
contribute to the staging of a playtext. Some theatre practitioners, for
example, experimented with different media and explored the meeting of
theatre and cinema or television. Quartucci used film projections at the back
of the stage to illustrate the action, and also de Berardinis made extensive
use of recorded videos in his productions.59 What united all the artists
contacted to sign the manifesto was the common intent to explore
alternative forms of art to the mainstream.60
58
Lerici was an author, but also a publisher and a critic. In 1964, he wrote the text La
storia di Sawney Bean, directed and interpreted by Carmelo Bene. In 1966 he started his
collaboration with Quartucci for whom he wrote the play Libere Stanze (Free Rooms).
59
I will discuss the role of projections in de Berardinis’s theatre in the section of the
chapter dedicated to him.
60
There were Bene (1937-2002), Quartucci (born 1938), and directors Antonio Calenda
(born 1939), Luca Ronconi (born 1933), and Aldo Trionfo (1921-1989). There was
Emanuele Luzzati (1921-2007), stage designer and illustrator. There were cinema directors
Marco Bellocchio (born 1939) and Liliana Cavani (born 1937). Bellocchio’s film, Pugni in
tasca of 1965 and Cavani’s Francesco d’Assisi of 1966 were quite challenging for the
establishment, the first being very critical of the idea of the family, the second presenting St
Francis as a protester and supporter of armed brotherhood. Other signatories were singer
and composer Cathy Barberian (1935-1983), and Sylvano Bussotti (born 1931). The
complete list of signatories can be found in Visone, Il Nuovo Teatro.
213
Below I include excerpts of the manifesto; then I will summarize the
content of the ‘Elements of Discussion of the Conference for a New
Theatre’, and will give an account of the events that occurred during the
conference.61 Although this will take my discussion away from
Shakespeare, it is necessary to understand the general thinking about what
kind of innovations were needed in theatre in the Italy of the 1960s.
Moreover, in the next two sections, it will become clear that New Theatre
practices and Shakespearian practices had many resemblances, and that the
New Theatre practitioners had particular affinity with Shakespeare’s plays,
which were especially fruitful material for their productions.
In the first part of the Manifesto, the signatories clarify their
opposition to the great and powerful civic public theatres which, according
to them, too often offered a commercial repertory to satisfy the audience and
sell more tickets, while they only marginally devoted their attention to
research and experimental theatre and to the theatrical offerings coming
from foreign countries:
In una situazione di progressiva involuzione, estesa a molti settori
chiave della vita nazionale, in questi anni si è assistito
all’inaridimento della vita teatrale, resa ancora più grave e subdola
dall’attuale stato di apparente floridezza. Apparenza pericolosa in
quanto nasconde l’invecchiamento e il mancato adeguamento delle
strutture; la crescente ingerenza della burocrazia politica e
amministrativa nei teatri pubblici; il monopolio dei gruppi di potere;
la sordità di fronte al più significativo repertorio internazionale; la
complice disattenzione nella quale sono state spente le iniziative
sperimentali (...).62
In a situation of increasing regression, extending to many key sectors
of national life, in recent years we have witnessed the stifling of
theatre, made even more serious and deceptive by its current
61
62
The manifesto can be found in Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia, pp. 135-137.
Ibid., p.135. All subsequent references to this text will be in round brackets.
214
apparently flourishing state. It is a dangerous appearance, as it hides
the ageing and the obsolescence of theatre buildings; the increasing
interference of political and administrative bureaucracy in the public
theatres; the monopoly of groups with power; the deafness to the
more significant international repertory; the complicit neglect of
experimental initiatives.
Alongside the stagnation of theatre, they denounce the stagnation of
criticism, as the mainstream critics too often favoured the official theatre,
thus renouncing their role of researchers, a role that they should share with
directors, musicians, stage designers, technicians, and costumists:
La critica drammatica istituzionale dal suo canto, invece di svolgere
una funzione di provocazione e di stimolo su questa situazione
generale, ha contribuito al mantenimento dello stato di fatto (…) con
una rinuncia di fatto al suo compito primo di ricerca e di
interpretazione. (135-136)
As for mainstream theatre criticism, instead of provoking and
stimulating in this general situation, it has contributed to the
maintenance of the status quo (…), thus renouncing its main task of
research and interpretation.
The official theatre, according to the signatories of the manifesto, did
not only neglect any ideas coming from foreign theatrical experiences; it
also isolated itself from any other artistic form aiming to innovation and
experimentation:
Con poche (…) eccezioni il nostro teatro (…), si è così venuto a
trovare in una posizione di completo isolamento, sistematicamente
impermeabile cioè ad ogni innovazione culturale, alle ricerche e agli
esiti della scrittura poetica e del romanzo, alla sperimentazione
cinematografica, ai discorsi aperti dalla nuova musica e dalle
molteplici esperienze pittoriche e plastiche. (136)
215
With few (…) exceptions our theatre (…), has found itself in a
position of complete isolation, systematically neglecting any cultural
innovation, like research and results in the field of poetry and fiction
writing, film-experimentation, innovations brought about by the new
music and by the numerous pictorial and plastic experiences.
Then they claim their distance from the official theatre:
La nostra attività di scrittori, critici, registi, scenografi, musicisti,
attori, tecnici di teatro, anche se di diverse ideologie, (…), ci fa
sentire estranei ai modi, alle mentalità e alle esperienze del teatro
cosiddetto ufficiale. (136)
We feel that our activity as writers, critics, directors, stage designers,
musicians, actors, theatre technicians, despite our different
ideologies, (…), does not belong to the ways, to the mindset and to
the experiences of the so-called official theatre.
They then clarify that criticism needs to acquire the skills and tools
necessary to understand the new performances; also, they express their wish
to create and use new techniques, to use actors who were not trained in
drama schools, and to stage plays in spaces other than theatres, like schools
or cultural centres, for example.
Oggi s’impone la necessità di adeguare gli strumenti critici agli
elementi tecnico-formali dello spettacolo, di affrontare l’impegno
drammaturgico senza alcuna soggezione agli schemi prestabiliti, con
un recupero di tecniche e una proposta di altre tecniche, con l’uso di
attori fuori della linea accademica (…), con la scelta di
ambientazioni che ricreino lo spazio scenico. (136)
Today it is necessary to adapt criticism to the technical and formal
elements of performance, to face the dramaturgical task without any
pre-conceived notions, thus rediscovering lost techniques as well as
216
suggesting alternative techniques, employing actors who do not
belong to the academy (…) choosing settings that recreate the stage.
They did not want a theatre for an elite, for the chosen few (the same
words had been pronounced twenty years before by Strehler and Grassi!),
and, at the same time, they wanted to take advantage of the opportunities
(mainly financial) offered by the public organizations.
Non vogliamo dar vita a un teatro clandestino per pochi iniziati, né
rimanere esclusi dalle possibilità offerte dale organizzazioni di
pubblico alle quali riteniamo di avere diritto. (137)
We do not want to create a clandestine theatre for the chosen few,
neither do we want to be excluded from the possibilities offered by
public organizations to which we believe we are entitled.
The final part of the manifesto is a call for a conference addressed to all
those interested, and who, despite their different modes, shared the same
views on theatre.
It is interesting to notice how the attitude of the signatories towards
the official theatre was ambivalent. If on the one hand they wanted to
distance themselves from that circuit, on the other they did not want to be
excluded from the opportunities that the state theatres could offer them. The
same ambivalence seemed to characterize the attitude of the official theatre
towards the new groups: on the one hand some public theatres offered forms
of collaboration to ‘experimental companies’, on the other they relegated
their productions to the margins of their annual repertory. I am thinking, for
example, of the collaboration between Genoa’s civic public theatre –
directed by Luigi Squarzina and Ivo Chiesa – and Quartucci’s group in the
theatrical season 1963-1964.63 The original plan was that of creating a
63
Luigi Squarzina (1922-2010) was a playwright and director. He was one of the
protagonists of the Italian theatre of the twentieth century. Jointly with Ivo Chiesa he
directed Genoa’s civic public theatre from 1962 to 1976 and Rome Teatro Argentina from
1976 to 1983. Ivo Chiesa (1921-2003) was a theatre impresario, journalist and playwright.
217
research group within the organization of Genoa’s theatre in order to
renovate and, hopefully, overcome the crisis that was afflicting the civic
public theatres. At the same time, Quartucci’s group would be allowed to
experiment with the backing of a big theatre and all the security that this
could grant. But the group was very disappointed when they realized that
they were given very limited chances to work: their staging of Aspettando
Godot (Waiting for Godot), for example, was presented only at the end of
the season and for only nineteen evenings.
4.1.2 The ‘Elementi di discussione del convegno per un nuovo
teatro’ (‘Elements of Discussion of the Conference for a New
Theatre’)
After the manifesto, the promoters of the Ivrea Conference wrote a
draft plan of discussion called the ‘Elementi di discussion del convegno per
un nuovo teatro’ (‘Elements of Discussion of the Conference for a New
Theatre’) published in the first issue of the theatre magazine Teatro founded
in 1967 by Bartolucci, Capriolo and Fadini.64 This issue also contained
some articles on the experiences of the most influential representatives of
the New Theatre outside Italy: Artaud, the Living Theatre, Grotowski, and
Brook. According to the promoters’ plan, each of the three days of the
conference should focus on one topic and each topic was clearly and
thoroughly outlined in the ‘Elements of discussion of the Conference for a
New Theatre’.65
The first section of the ‘Elements of Discussion’ is entitled ‘Teatro
di laboratorio e teatro collettivo’ (‘Theatre as a Laboratory and Collective
He directed Genoa’s theatre from 1955 to 2000. In 1946, together with Gian Maria
Guglielmino, he founded the magazine Sipario, which he directed until 1951.
64
Teatro, 1 (summer 1967).
65
The complete text of the ‘Elementi di discussione del convegno per un nuovo teatro’ can
be found in Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia, pp. 138-148.
218
Theatre’).66 Theatre as a laboratory is taken to mean that none of the targets
reached by the representatives of the New Theatre should be taken for
granted, but should rather be questioned, verified and, if necessary,
modified. Thus, theatre is seen as an ‘open structure’, where research and
experimentation become key words and should be applied to all the fields of
theatre work, like playwriting, methodology, stage setting, scenic materials,
acting, and the relationship between stage and audience. Collective theatre
refers to the encounter between theatre and society. The society of the mid1960s was seen as a complex, problematic and articulate society, whose
characteristics should be reflected in the New Theatre. Fundamental for the
creation of theatre projects that are ‘popular’ (meaning close to the life and
problems of the people) is teamwork, collective work that becomes preeminent in all the phases of a staging. Therefore, the individual writing of an
author is revised and completed during the staging by all the company
members. Collective work also means the direct participation of the public
and, as a consequence, a teatro senza pareti (theatre without walls), where
any division between stage and audience is eliminated. As a consequence,
the scenic writing should also take place outside traditional theatres, for
instance in schools or cultural centres.
The second section of the discussion paper, entitled ‘Acquisizione e
sperimentazione dei nuovi materiali scenici’ (‘Acquisition of and
Experimentation with New Scenic Materials’)67 argues that in the New
Theatre all the elements that contribute to the realization of the scenic
writing form a unity in which there is no hierarchy. Such elements are:
gesture, props, playwriting, sound, and scenic space. Fundamental is the fact
that the elements are not used as means to create a narration, but are to be
understood just for what they are.
In spoken language sound is no longer considered of secondary
importance, and phonetics becomes the predominant linguistic element of
the spoken word. It is the sound of the word that counts, not its meaning, a
66
67
Ibid., pp. 138-141.
See Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia, pp. 141-145.
219
concept that will become very clear in my analysis of Bene’s work: the
actor-director dissected the word, deprived it of its significance and
completely distorted diction.
The scenic space acquires a formal significance; it is no longer the
container of the dramatic action (or, at least, not only), but becomes one of
the elements constituting the scenic writing, namely the temporal and space
forms of the dramatic action. It is also the formal relationship that the
dramatic action establishes between the stage and the audience, and between
the actor and the audience. Zip can help us to understand this point. In an
interview that Scabia and Quartucci gave to Sipario in 1965, they stated that
the whole theatre was transformed into a stage in order to dissolve the single
perspective (the spectator’s ego) and to multiply the focus of the
performance. The spectator did not watch a performance from the stalls but
was sitting in the performing area, and the action took place all around
him.68 However, they appreciate that this was not a completely new
experience as it had already been theorized by Artaud and put into practice
by Mejerchol’d. They also refer to the painting of Jackson Pollock, who
abolished the top and the bottom, the right and the left of his paintings,
walked around the canvas, worked from the four sides and was literally in
the painting.
The third section of the discussion paper is entitled ‘Acquisizione di
un pubblico nuovo attraverso nuove strutture organizzative’ (‘Acquisition of
a New Audience by Means of New Organizational Structures’). 69 In this
part of the programme, the promoters of the conference illustrate how the
Italian society of the 1960s differed from what it was at the end of World
War Two and what changes occurred in the theatre world in the same
period. Some of the issues they address are: the differentiation and
specialization of the various levels of culture; the cultural and economic gap
between industrialized areas and socially depressed areas; a young audience
much more educated than in the past; the newly acquired possibility of
68
69
Prosperi, ‘Contemporary Italian Theatre’, p. 24.
Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale in Italia, pp. 145-148.
220
reception
and
distribution
of
theatre
by non-specialized
cultural
organizations like cultural circles, schools and so on; the pre-eminence of
experimental trends; and the birth of numerous autonomous theatre groups
with strong connections in various sectors of society. Therefore, they
promote a big change in the policy of the great publicly funded theatres and
in the idea of theatre as a ‘public service’, in favour of a theatre that is really
present in the social body. The scenic space can no longer be just the
traditional theatre, but it must also extend to other structures like schools or
cultural centres, that is those places where it is still possible to focus on the
process of staging a show rather than on the final product, to experiment,
and to train a new generation of theatre practitioners and of audience.
Opposing the civic public theatres that no longer devote their attention to
research – mainly for economic reasons – and do not distinguish among
different audiences, Bartolucci, Quadri, Fadini and Capriolo foster a new
theatre that takes into consideration the social composition of its audiences,
their modes of expression, their real problems. To reach the objectives
outlined in this programme, it is necessary to allow the development of
various and varied theatre groups, whose main task is to do research and to
experiment with new models of theatre, on a new kind of playwriting, on
new scenic spaces, on new forms of acting, in short, on the scenic writing.
4.1.3 The Convegno di Ivrea
The Convegno di Ivrea took place from the ninth to the twelfth June
1967 at Palazzo Canavese, a village near Ivrea, and at Turin Cultural
Union.70 As I wrote in the previous paragraph, in the organizers’ view, each
70
A detailed account of the events occurred during the conference can be found in Visone,
La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, pp. 227-255 and in Francesco Bono, ‘Convegno per
un Nuovo Teatro, Ivrea 1967: rivoluzioni dimenticate e utopie realizzate’, (Master’s thesis,
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione di Milano, 2004). The Unione culturale
Franco Antonicelli (Turin Cultural Union) was founded in June 1945 by a group of
antifascist intellectuals. Here they wanted to study Italian history and culture, focusing their
221
day of the conference should be dedicated to one of the topics mentioned in
the ‘Elementi di discussione’. Moreover, they also suggested a very precise
programme according to which there should be a discussion of the topic in
the morning, what they called the ‘conferenze-spettacolo’ (‘seminarperformances’) in the afternoon, and ‘proposte di spettacolo’ (‘performance
proposals’) in the evening. Unfortunately, the programme that the
organizers had conceived for the conference was scarcely realized. None of
the theatre groups – with the exception of de Berardinis and Perla Peragallo
and the Teatro d’Ottobre – presented their shows; the presentation of
Eugenio Barba’s work with the actors failed completely as the Italians were
not used to that kind of training and to the exercises that Barba proposed,
aimed to gain total control of the body, sounds and gestures; and there was
very little discussion on the ‘language’ of the new theatre, on the methods,
on the materials, on all those elements that should constitute the new scenic
writing.
It is true that Grotowski’s ideas – whose method very much inspired
Barba – were circulating in Italy, but the very strict training to which
Barba’s actors were subject (hours and hours of mainly physical, but also
vocal training that the actors of the company did all year round regardless of
whether they were rehearsing for a performance or not) was not understood
in Italy. The main aim of the protagonists of the New Theatre in Italy was to
replace the predominance of the text with a staging that would make the text
just one of the elements, whereas the training of the actors was not their
priority or, at least, that kind of training. In fact, if Ricci was much more
interested in visual images and objects than in the presence of the actor,
with de Berardinis and Bene, we will witness a return to the actor’s theatre,
that does not justify the contempt they expressed for Barba’s work. What I
think had a stronger impact on the Italian experimentalists through
Grotowskj’s and Barba’s methods, was the idea of theatre as a ‘laboratory’,
attention on the history of Partisan Resistance and of the labour movement. In the 1960s the
most important avant-garde theatre groups and artists performed here. Among them were
the Living Theatre, Bene, and John Cage.
222
meaning a safe space where a company could do research and could
experiment without worrying too much about the show. As for the acting,
perhaps, it was more with the ideas of the Living Theatre that some of the
Italian experimentalists had points in common. I am referring, in particular,
to the importance that the American group gave to improvisation on the
stage, as a way of rendering the performance more realistic, which was used
by some of the Italian experimentalists too. Quartucci worked on
improvisation both in Zip and in Cartoteca, (The Paper-Archive) presented
in May 1965. In the latter, the actors were not professionals, but students
who expressed themselves mainly with improvisation. However, the
arrogant attitude that many of the participants showed at the conference is
not justifiable in my opinion. This is how Ettore Capriolo recollects the
experience:
i maggiori esponenti dell’avanguardia teatrale di allora, e cioè
Carmelo Bene, Quartucci e Ricci, non presentarono assolutamente
niente, si guardarono bene dal mostrare materiali di lavoro, li
presentarono invece coloro che aspettavano un’occasione per farsi
vedere (…). Volevamo uno scambio di esperienze di lavoro,
pensavamo di poter fare un bel laboratorio dove ciascuno si
esprimesse, ma nessuno aveva voglia di scoprirsi.71
The leading exponents of the theatrical avant-garde, namely Carmelo
Bene, Quartucci and Ricci, did not present anything at all, they took
good care not to show their work materials, whereas those who were
waiting for an opportunity to make themselves known did (…). We
wanted an exchange of work experiences, we thought we could
organize a workshop in which everybody would express themselves,
but none wanted to reveal themselves.
71
Francesco Bono, ‘Dossier Ivrea 1967. Le opinioni di chi partecipò’, ateatro webzine di
cultura teatrale, 108.11,ed. Oliviero Ponte di Pino
<http://www.ateatro.org/mostranew.asp?num=108&ord=11> [accessed 10 December
2012].
223
All the speakers mainly dealt with organizational problems: how to
set up a strong movement that would oppose the official theatre. It became
clear that a common platform in terms of theatre language did not exist.
Each artist or group of artists had developed a very individual and personal
way of dealing with the text, the acting, the scenic space, and the relations
between actors and objects, and between the stage and the audience and,
more importantly, was not prepared to share them with the other
participants. The categories highlighted by the promoters of the conference
in the ‘Elements of Discussion’ were all present in the work of the various
artists, but it seemed that a common platform on how to deal with the scenic
materials did not exist. However, at the end of the second day, after a very
heated debate between Bene and the Teatro d’Ottobre led by Sandro Bajini,
two opposite fronts were naturally created: the first gathered Bene, de
Berardinis, Ricci and Quartucci, all interested in theatre as a form of art, in
its aesthetic value, in the use of actors and materials for their artistic
relevance; the second front grouped the Teatro d’ Ottobre and all the other
participants who saw theatre primarily as a means of political
communication, of propaganda to be realized, according to Bajini ‘con una
serie di parole d’ordine, di slogan e specie nella maniera più antiartistica
possibile’72 (‘with a series of slogans and, above all, in the most anti-artistic
possible way’).
The first reactions after the conference were rather negative: most of
the participants, including the organizers, considered it a failure, as very
little had been discussed in terms of aesthetics, there had been very little
sharing, but a lot of arguments. It was only after many years that the value
of the conference was finally recognized. Capriolo, interviewed in 1987,
stated that a series of problems concerning theatre were made manifest at
the conference.73 Quadri saw in the conference the point at which the
phenomenon of the New Theatre in Italy was codified, the year when, for
the first time, new groups asked themselves the same questions about
72
73
Quoted in Visone, La nascita del Nuovo Teatro in Italia, p. 243.
Bono, ‘Dossier Ivrea’.
224
organization.74 Among those who have written about the conference, De
Marinis believes that, despite all the problems, the conference was very
important for various reasons: for the presence of high-profile artists or
groups like Barba’s Odin Teatret, for the confrontations and disputes among
the participants, and for the fact that Ivrea made it clear that a real divide
now existed between the official theatre and the new avant-garde groups.75 I
agree with all of these conclusions, but what strikes me most from this
episode is the fact that, on that occasion, there seemed to be a real
collaboration between critics (who were also fine intellectuals) and theatre
practitioners, something unusual even today.
4.1.4 The New Theatre and the Early Twentieth-Century
Avant-Garde Movements
Before moving on to analyse the work that de Berardinis and Bene
did with Shakespeare’s plays in the 1960s, I would like to conclude with a
few thoughts on the relationship between the New Theatre and the early
twentieth-century avant-garde movements. Was the New Theatre genuinely
new, or should it be regarded as a continuation of those experimental
movements? In both cases there was a desire to break with tradition and to
experiment with new forms of expression. Of course, the tradition was not
the same. In the case of the early twentieth-century avant-garde theatre,
tradition was represented in Italy by the bourgeois theatre and by the theatre
of Verism; in the 1960s, tradition was represented by the director’s theatre.
Although the two were completely different, they shared the idea of a
realistic staging, aiming to narrate a story. The elimination of the narrative
was the starting point for both the avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde
movements. Also there can be found elements of the stagings of the New
Theatre that were characteristic of early twentieth-century movements. The
74
75
Franco Quadri, L’avanguardia teatrale italiana, p. 9.
De Marinis, Il Nuovo Teatro, p. 172.
225
protagonists of the New Theatre did not deny this. I mentioned before the
interview with Quartucci and Scabia, who affirmed that they wanted to draw
on the immense wealth of the avant-garde experiments, techniques, results
and failures. And we cannot forget Bene’s harsh attack on the theatre group
‘Gruppo d’ottobre’ at the Convegno di Ivrea, when they recited Marinetti’s
poem L’assedio di Adrianopoli (The Battle of Adrianopoli) in very ironic
tones. It seems that the protagonists of the New Theatre expanded on, and
put in practice, some of the ideas that had been conceived by the early
twentieth-century movements but had only to a certain extent been given a
practical form at that time. If we think of Artaud, for example, he became a
protagonist of the theatrical renewal of the 1960s, although he was dead by
then and he had conceived his thoughts decades before. An ideal thread
between ideas expressed in the first decades of the twentieth century and the
experimentation of the New Theatre in Italy and of other groups or
individuals outside Italy – I am thinking of Brook, or the Living Theatre for
example – certainly existed. The protagonists of the renewal of the 1960s
drew on them, and expanded on them. Maybe, as Quartucci and Scabia
affirmed in the interview to Sipario, the new experimentalists were more
interested in building than in destroying: ‘Ma a noi oggi interessa un teatro
di costruzione, non di distruzione. Una forma teatrale costruita, non la
dissoluzione della forma teatrale’.76 (‘But today we are interested in a
theatre that builds, rather than destroys. A constructed theatrical form, not
the dissolution of theatrical form’). It will be interesting to see, in the next
two sections, whether the theatre of de Berardinis and of Bene, which
apparently abandoned any form of narration and of character development,
was a theatre of construction or of destruction.
76
‘Per un’avanguardia italiana’, Sipario (Nov. 1965), 11-12, (p. 12).
226
4.2. Leo de Berardinis
Leo de Berardinis worked on Shakespeare’s plays throughout his
artistic career, providing very personal interpretations, which were always
interpolated with material from all kinds of sources. He puzzled critics, who
did not understand his experiments at the beginning, and many cried shame,
as they saw these stagings as disrespectful of Shakespeare’s playtexts. Yet,
as I want to demonstrate in this section of the chapter, there are various
elements in de Berardinis’s stagings, and in the way in which he worked,
that are very Shakespearian.77 Also, I wish to point out the characteristics of
de Berardinis’s theatre that made him a representative of the New Theatre,
though in a very personal way. Finally, I want to look at his opposition to
the director’s theatre and to the supremacy of the role of the director, and to
show how he resumed the typically Italian tradition of the actor’s theatre
developing it in a very personal way. For my discussion I will not only rely
on books and articles, but also on the words of actress and director Elena
Bucci, who worked with de Berardinis for ten years in the 1980s and 1990s,
and gave me a long interview on 14 April 2012.78 Our conversation made
the information I had about de Berardinis’s theatre much more interesting
and fascinating, and it was as if his theatre came to life again. Moreover,
thanks to the fact that she experienced this theatre, which is not at all easy to
understand, she brought light to many aspects of it that are not
straightforward in books and journals accounts.
**********
77
This very hybridity, the weaving together of materials from many diverse sources, is
itself very Shakespearian, as I will widely discuss further on in this section.
78
After working ten years with Leo de Berardinis, Elena Bucci set up her own company
‘Le belle bandiere’ with which she performs in various theatres all over Italy.
227
4.2.1 Working with Shakespeare in the 1960s: La Faticosa
Messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare and Sir And
Lady Macbeth
In June 1967 in the 254th issue of the magazine Sipario, Rodolfo
Wilcock published his review of Leo de Berardinis and Perla Peragallo’s La
faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare. He ended his
reflection upon this production with the words:
La critica approva i giovani che studiano, pur non dilettandosi nel
semplice atto di vederli studiare. Riconosce tuttavia che soltanto
dallo studio provengono le proposte che interessano la critica.79
Critics approve of studious young people, although they take no
satisfaction from simply seeing them study. However, they know
well that only study produces what really interests them.
Wilcock was among the few critics who did not rail at de Berardinis and
Peragallo’s first staging of a play by Shakespeare. Yet, as the above
quotation suggests, he had not been able to codify that production which, as
he wrote, contained ‘echi dell’Amleto di Shakespeare’ (‘echoes of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet’). Leo and Perla, as they are usually referred to in
Italy (I will use their family name from now on), met when they were very
young. De Berardinis (1939-2008) was twenty-seven; he had worked with
Quartucci playing the role of Clov in a 1963 production of Finale di partita
(Endgame), of Vladimir in the 1964 staging of Aspettando Godot (Waiting
for Godot) and, in 1965, he was the character of Lap in Zip. Peragallo was a
few years younger (1943-2007). She had graduated from Alessandro
Fersen’s school;80 she had a natural dramatic talent and a strong musical
background that she had inherited from her family. Their meeting, about
79
Rodolfo Wilcock, ‘La faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare’,
Sipario, 254 (June 1967), p. 43.
80
Alessandro Fersen (1911-2001), pseudonym of Aleksander Fajrajzen, set up his acting
school ‘Studio di arti sceniche’ in Rome in 1957.
228
two years before the above-mentioned production, marked the beginning of
a prolific working collaboration and a love relationship that lasted until
1981, when Peragallo left theatre and devoted the following years to
teaching.
The first thing that draws our attention is the title, The Challenging
Staging of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I will discuss which challenges
the two friends met during the staging. But it is now interesting to observe
the theatrical self-consciousness of the title which, in my opinion, reveals a
desire to focus on the process rather than on the final production. Therefore,
it seems to be a declaration of intent, and it creates an intimate relationship
with the audience, a kind of dialogue.
La faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare was
staged on 21 April 1967 at the small underground Teatro alla Ringhiera in
Rome. Putting on their Hamlet had taken de Berardinis and Peragallo about
a year and – as I pointed out above – it had been a very challenging
enterprise. They had little money, inadequate space to rehearse (they
rehearsed at Peragallo’s place or in a warehouse where de Berardinis lived).
They lacked experience but they were talented and determined. The result
was a staging that was fiercely attacked by the great majority of critics when
it was presented at Teatro alla Ringhiera, but later became symbolic of the
New Theatre after being staged at the Convegno di Ivrea.
In the introduction to his interview with de Berardinis ‘From
Shakespeare to Shakespeare: The Theatre Transcended’, De Marinis points
out a few elements that characterised the production: ‘an original blending
of theatre and cinema’, ‘provocative manipulations of the text’, ‘the use of
improvisation (in the jazz rather than the theatrical sense)’, ‘performance
that was to focus less on interpretation of roles and more on selfexpression’.81 Certainly, one of the most original elements of this show was
the use of three cinema screens where de Berardinis and Peragallo appeared
playing their roles. At the same time, they were also acting on the stage and,
through the use of microphones, gave voice to and talked with their ‘alter
81
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare: The Theatre Transcended’, p. 49.
229
egos’ on the screens, and commented upon their actions.82 In his book La
bellezza amara, Gianni Manzella notices that the two artists did not use
sound films because that would have been too expensive.83 But de
Berardinis and Peragallo were not interested in ‘manufacturing’ a perfect
finished product. In this respect, they shared in the ideas of artists like
Pollock or other creators of Action Painting.84 It was the process that
counted for them, while they refused the idea of the work of art as a product,
and its degradation to goods that are manufactured just to be sold.85 De
Berardinis and Peragallo had a similar view of art. With their stagings they
were attacking the official theatre and its well-structured organization that,
thanks to good financial backing, offered perfect, finished products to be
commercialized on the stages of the various civic public theatres. Their
productions, instead, were more like unfinished artworks (this idea reminds
me of Michelangelo’s ‘non finito’, unfinished sculptures), or ‘open’ works,
according to Eco’s definition.86 However ‘homemade’ these films were, de
Berardinis and Peragallo’s use of cinematographic media in their stagings
would pave the way for a very fashionable trend in the Italian theatre of the
1980s.87 The idea of open work was also put in practice through
improvisation, a technique that the two artists would use more extensively
in their successive productions and that characterised some of de
Berardinis’s shows after the separation from Peragallo: ‘I restricted myself
to going on stage and the performance emerged’.88 Improvisation also
responded to their need to express themselves. Manzella rightly points out
that even the use of film was not intended for experiment but for selfexpression: ‘necessità espressiva’ (‘necessary expression’), he says.89
Everything, in this production, responded to this. Like Hamlet, the isolated
young man who tries to find his way, they felt the alienation of the artist in a
82
Molinari, Teatro e antiteatro dal dopoguerra a oggi, p. 102.
Manzella, La bellezza amara: arte e vita di Leo de Berardinis, p. 12.
84
Scabia and Quartucci referred to the art of Pollock too. See Section 1.2, (p. 220).
85
Molinari, Teatro e antiteatro, p. 183.
86
See this Section 1, (p. 196).
87
Molinari, Teatro e antiteatro, p. 102.
88
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’, p. 50.
89
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 13.
230
83
hostile world, the world of mainstream theatre, and were looking for ways
to give voice to their alienation and to their needs. If the character of Hamlet
is the focus of their production, then manipulating the text becomes
legitimate, and the madness of Ophelia can be interspersed with a scene
from The Brig by the Living Theatre. Although Manzella does not explain
the choice of this play, we can make some assumptions. The Brig is a play
written by former U.S. Marine Kenneth H. Brown, which was first
performed in New York at the 44th Street Theatre by The Living Theatre on
13 May 1963, and it was staged in Italy in 1965. The play is an antiauthoritarian look at the living conditions in a Marine prison. When it was
staged in New York, it led to the closure of the theatre space and to the brief
imprisonment of Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the founders of the theatre
company. It is a play about physical and psychological violence perpetrated
by Marines against other Marines. Therefore, it was intended as a challenge
to the establishment, and to the authorities. It is a minimal play, and it is
very antitheatrical. During rehearsals Beck and Malina put the actors
through sheer hell, U.S. Marine Corps punishment style, with the cast’s
assent, more or less. Some scenes were improvised, and the actors had to
react to unexpected orders by the guards, because Beck and Malina did not
want to show the reality of the Brig (the prison), but wanted the reality itself
to exist on the stage. Therefore, not only did the play allow the two directors
to denounce the physical and psychological brutality of Marine life, but it
also allowed them to attack the logic of the traditional staging.
All of these elements certainly attracted de Berardinis and Peragallo,
who were also ‘screaming’ their anger against institutions and authorities on
the one hand, and aganst the complacency of Italian theatre on the other, and
who were looking for new forms of theatre. Hamlet, for the two actors, was
not a role to play, but a ‘stato di coscienza’ (‘state of consciousness’)90 to
explore through acting, as the objective of theatre is not that of
communicating but of knowing. It is during rehearsal and during the
90
La terza vita di Leo: gli ultimi vent’anni del teatro di Leo de Berardinis a Bologna, p.
252.
231
performance for the audience, that this process of acquiring knowledge
takes place for the actor. Hence the need to improvise: the actor explores the
text through acting and reacts to his/her discoveries, in the same way as the
actors of The Brig did:
Per un teatro che non si proponeva di offrire la traduzione di una
cosa ma la cosa stessa. Dove l’attore si trasforma in reagente della
realtà vissuta giorno per giorno, per rovesciarla sullo spettatore.91
For a theatre that did not purport to offer the representation of a thing
but the thing itself. Where the actor transforms himself into a reactor
to reality lived day by day and gives it back to the audience.
Knowledge, therefore, does not occur before but during the performance, as
theatre is not the representation through props, music, lighting, gestures,
movements of a text, but rather it is the discovery of the text on the stage. In
her essay ‘Gli anni sessanta e settanta e la regia della crisi. Gli esempi di
Quartucci e Totò, Bene, De Berardinis e Peragallo’ (‘The Sixties and
Seventies, and the directing of the crisis. The examples of Quartucci and
Totò, Bene, De Beradinis and Peragallo’), Donatella Orecchia defines the
text as a ‘partitura d’attore’ (‘actor’s score’) that corresponds to Bartolucci’s
idea of scenic writing.92 What does she mean by that? She means the
rewriting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a rewriting that takes place before and
during the performance. In his review, Wilcock doubts the presence of a
script. He writes about a very heterogeneous performance which, through
quotes from other sources, made the audience’s task of understanding
difficult. I would add that it made the critic’s task difficult too. As requested
by the promoters of the Convegno di Ivrea, the critic needed to acquire new
91
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 13.
The essay is contained in AA.V. Corpi e visioni: indizi sul teatro contemporaneo, ed. A.
Audino (Roma: Artemide, 2007), but I have consulted the online reduced version:
Donatella Orecchia, ‘Leo de Berardinis e Perla Peragallo: teatro come jam session’, L’asino
vola: scritti molesti sullo spettacolo e la cultura nel tempo dell’emergenza, 2 (Nov. 2008)
<http:www.lasinovola.it/archivio/teatro/0811_2/leoeperla.pdf> [accessed 10 December
2012], 1-8 (p. 5). For more about scenic writing see Chapter 4.1, (pp. 195-196).
232
92
instruments to read the productions of the New Theatre. Wilcock was aware
that he was in the presence of something good when he saw the Faticosa
messinscena but, probably, was not able to understand it fully. What is
important, I believe, is that he and the other ‘dissident’ critics, whom I
mentioned in the previous sections, were willing to learn, to explore, and to
change the way in which they were used to watching a theatre production
and to reviewing it. It was all work in progress. The new theatre
practitioners were finding new ways to make theatre, the critics were
following them closely, and the audiences who attended their performances
were ready to be astounded, and to witness the development of a new kind
of theatre. Trying to judge the staging through its correspondence to the text
would inevitably lead to misunderstanding. De Berardinis and Peragallo
wished to ‘pensare teatralmente’ (‘think theatrically’), to find the answers
‘in fieri’ (in the course of execution). Manzella defines them as ‘besti[e]
teatral[i]’ (‘theatrical beasts’),93 who were not interested in a philological
reading of Shakespeare’s text on the stage. Through the text they wanted to
explore, to know themselves and the world, and to express themeselves. The
‘theatrical beast’ does everything: he is an actor, but also the ‘regista di se
stesso’ (‘director of himself’).94 He is in charge of everything, of the text, of
the sounds, the lights, the costumes, the stage setting, and the films. In the
Faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare, de Berardinis
and Peragallo relied on the help and experience of two cineastes for the
video, Alberto Grifi and Mario Masini. But when they dropped out the two
artists finished the shots and also did the montage. In doing everything for
themselves, de Berardinis and Peragallo were sending a clear message to the
representatives of the director’s theatre. They were affirming their wish to
reconnect to the tradition of the actor’s theatre – with the actor responsible
for every single phase of the staging – which, beginning with the improvised
performances of the artists of the commedia dell’arte, has never died in
93
94
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 13.
Orecchia, ‘Leo de Berardinis e Perla Peragallo’, p. 5.
233
Italy, and has been resumed in different forms many times through the
centuries.
All this interest in self-expression rather than in the representation of
a character on the stage was intended to affirm the autonomy of the actor
and his creative power, as opposed to his submission to the director’s
instructions. In my conversation with Bucci, and as I have already illustrated
in the previous section of the chapter, she pointed out that in Shakespeare’s
time: ‘il drammaturgo prendeva tantissimo dagli attori, gli attori erano
creatori, improvvisatori, creavano al momento’ (‘the playwright drew a lot
from the actors, who were improvisers and created during the
performance’).95 There is a clear resemblance between Shakespearian
theatre practices and the work of de Berardinis and Peragallo, which is not a
coincidence. The result of their work on Macbeth was a staging that, in the
words of Bartolucci (who saw the play), was characterised by a total
libertà scenica (…) [che] fa a meno di qualsiasi riscontro illusorio
con quel materiale drammaturgico e con quel che esso rappresenta
storicamente, proponendone non tanto una soluzione quanto
un’apertura.96
Scenic
freedom
(…)
[which]
does
without
any
illusory
correspondence with that dramaturgical material and with what it
represents historically, offering an open interpretation rather than a
solution.
The same words could be applied to de Berardinis and Peragallo’s second
Shakespearian enterprise: Sir and Lady Macbeth staged in March 1968 at
Carmelo Bene’s small underground theatre Teatrino del Divino Amore in
Rome. Once again, the first thing that draws our attention is the title. What
was the thinking behind it? I have not found any explanatory notes, so I can
only guess. My idea is that such a title was probably used to indicate a
95
96
See my discussion of Zip, Chapter 4.1 (pp. 205-208).
Giuseppe Bartolucci, Testi critici 1964-1987, p. 176.
234
social elevation that the action of the production then contradicted, as will
be clear from my discussion of the play. It may also have indicated to an
Italian audience a particular kind of British social propriety – the image of
an aristocratic ‘stiff upper lip’ – that was confounded and flouted by the
production’s stage action.97 But I will come back to this.
From what we can understand from the few accounts we have of that
production, de Berardinis and Peragallo used improvisation here less than in
the Faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare. Yet the
phrase ‘libertà scenica’ (‘scenic freedom’) certainly applies to this staging
too, by which I mean a completely personalized rendering of Shakespeare’s
material. Once again de Berardinis and Peragallo were the only actors. Once
again they were in charge of all the phases of the staging. Once again the
result was not the representation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but the
representation of themselves through Macbeth. Of course, as with their use
of Hamlet, this relies upon the audience’s already having a good knowledge
of Shakespeare’s play. The stage was scattered with electric wires,
microphones, lights – there was a sort of tree made up of twenty lamps
pinned to a stick – and torches. This time they did not use videos. In the
interview Bucci explained that, little by little, de Berardinis moved away
from mainly visual stagings (although lights were very important throughout
his career), to focus his attention on the actor ‘che può recitare anche alla
luce di un semaforo’ (‘who can even act in the light from a traffic signal’).
However, it would be wrong to affirm that the acting was not important in
this production. Everything revolved around the actions of de Berardinis and
Peragallo. The plot from Shakespeare’s play started after the assassination
of Duncan, and what was represented on the stage was ‘tutto l’orrore che
incombe come follia e angoscia sui due complici, legati da un comune
destino di sangue, incapaci ormai di separare la vita dal potere e privi ormai
dell’uno e dell’altra’.98 (‘all the haunting horrors that, like folly and anguish,
97
It must be noted that ‘Sir’ is a title for a knight or for a baronet, not for a Scottish thane
like Macbeth, and would not have been used in medieval Scotland – and indeed is not used
in the play.
98
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 16.
235
afflict the two accomplices, related to each other by a shared destiny of
blood, unable by now to separate life from power, and deprived even of
each other’). But what did de Berardinis and Peragallo do on that stage?
Peragallo spent most of the performance sitting on a bidet, or trying to wash
Duncan’s blood off her hands. She cried, she murmured, she threw up, she
shouted.
Figure 15: Perla Peragallo
De Berardinis did more or less the same lying on the old carpet and
dragging himself to the bidet to throw up. Even in this case we can only
guess at some of the choices made by de Berardinis and Peragallo. As I said
before, a contrast was created between what the title suggests and what the
audience saw on the stage. The bidet may stand for the throne and, at the
same time, it is the place where Peragallo/Lady Macbeth tries to wash her
hands. But why did they not choose a washbasin? And why the throwing up
and all those shouts? We may read this as a way to denounce where the
thirst for power leads. Macbeth and his wife have achieved their goals, but
the objects on the stage and their actions hint at the level of abjection and
degradation that they have reached. Even in the absence of a narrative,
everything here seems to tell a story or, we could say, to reveal a truth. It is
as if de Berardinis and Peragallo had found the nucleus of Macbeth, and
made every single choice in order to represent it on the stage.
236
Figure 16: Leo de Berardinis and Perla Peragallo in Sir and Lady Macbeth
Sounds were predominant in this production: thus the use of
microphones and even of a laringofono (a throat microphone) to transmit
the vibrations of the voice and in an unusual attempt to reproduce the
twelve-tone system. Lines were spoken in Italian, in the dialect of Foggia
and in English. Words were deformed and were used less for their meaning
than for their sonic quality. Music ranged from Verdi’s opera to Indian
songs and, unsurprisingly, also Schönberg’s atonal music. Bartolucci
defined all this as ‘l’elemento rumore’ (‘the noise element’) which, along
with ‘l’elemento corpo’ (‘the body element’) and ‘l’elemento luce’ (‘the
light element’), form a sort of delirium constituted by sounds, by movement
and gestures, and by lights all seen as ‘segni’ (‘signs’) that are either used
alternately or interact with one another.99 The innovative intention is clear,
and what is also important, I believe, is Bartolucci’s use of the word ‘sign’
that reminds me of those scenic materials that, according to him and the
other promoters of the Convegno di Ivrea, should be considered as signifiers
more than as signified.
Before moving on to the successive stagings of Shakespeare’s plays
which date back to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, I wish to sum up the
elements that characterize de Berardinis and Peragallo’s first two
Shakespearian enterprises and that make them iconic stagings of the Italian
New Theatre. The idea of the performance as open work is central, open for
99
Bartolucci, Testi critici, p. 182.
237
the creators who express themselves freely on the stage and also use
improvisation on the one hand, and for the audience who are expected to
interpret what they see subjectively rather than objectively on the other.100
This, of course, requires imagination and the need to move away from the
idea of the staging as the theatrical representation of a written text. Related
to this is the manipulation of the text, as the actors want to give voice to
their creativity and, through the manipulation, express themselves. They
also want to explore the text during the performance, reminiscent of
Bartolucci’s idea of scenic writing, according to which there is no
distinction between the phase of the writing of a text and the phase of its
mise-en-scène. Fundamental also was the opposition to the oppressive role
of the director who, in de Berardinis and Peragallo’s opinion, used the
actors as puppets. The ‘actors-authors’, instead, are in charge of the work on
the text, and of every step of the staging. Lastly, I need to mention the use of
props, lights, sounds, and also of the movements as ‘signs’, that are to be
considered for what they are and not for what they represent.
4.2.2 New Approaches to the Theatre of Shakespeare: the
Productions of the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s
In spite of periods of withdrawal, Leo de Berardinis is one of the few
author-directors from the new Italian theatre of the 60s and 70s who
has remained faithful to the spirit of experiment, and attempted
consistently to renew himself and his processes of theatremaking.101
These words by De Marinis are contained in the introduction to the
already-mentioned interview that he conducted with de Berardinis in 1985.
De Berardinis’s career is usually divided into three phases: the first
encounters with Peragallo; the collaboration with the company Nuova Scena
100
101
See Eco’s definition of ‘open work’ at p. 197.
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’, p. 49.
238
(New Stage) in Bologna from 1983 till the end of the 1980s; and the
stagings belonging to the Teatro di Leo, which he founded in Bologna in
1987. In all of these phases, Leo worked on Shakespeare, though with
different modalities. In this part of my discussion I will look at his
productions of the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, outlining the elements
that characterise his theatre and, in particular, his approach to Shakespeare,
in order to explore the ideas that I have outlined at the beginning of this
section. As I have not seen any of Leo’s stagings of Shakespeare’s plays and
there is very little that we have on video, I will not go into the level of detail
I explored with Strehler’s Re Lear and La Tempesta. Instead, I will proceed
to a more general discussion of the majority of the productions.102
In 1973, together with Peragallo, de Berardinis staged his first King
Lear, whose complete title was King lacreme Lear napulitane, that is King
Lear associated with Neapolitan tears.103 From the title, an interweaving of
King Lear and Lacreme napulitane by Libero Bovio, it is clear that
Shakespeare’s text was ‘contaminated’ with something else, that is with the
Neapolitan sceneggiata, a popular form of theatre that alternated sung and
spoken word in Neapolitan dialect revolving around love, betrayal, honour,
domestic grief, and life in the world of petty crime, all shown in pathetic
tones.104 Leo’s intention was that of exploring King Lear, observing how it
would react to the sceneggiata: ‘my approach to Shakespeare consisted in
an attempt at fusion – at making the text react almost chemically with
something else in order to see what was there, and to get to know its
constituent elements.’105 It is hard to understand what de Berardinis meant,
but what is clear is the process of fusion and, in this particular case, of his
wish to blend high culture – Shakespeare – with popular culture – the
102
The staging of Shakespeare’s plays after the first two are: King lacreme Lear napulitane
(1973); Amleto I (1984); King Lear: studi e variazioni (1985); Amleto II (1985); La
Tempesta (1986); Macbeth (1988); IV e V atto dell’Otello di William Shakespeare (Act 4
and 5 of Othello by William Shakespeare) (1992); Totò, principe di Danimarca (1993);
King Lear (workshop) (1996); King Lear n. 1 (King Lear no. 1) (1996); Lear Opera (1998).
The other titles in English are given in the list at p. 7.
103
‘Neapolitan tears’ is not written in standard Italian, but as a transliteration of Neapolitan.
104
Libero Bovio (1883-1942) was a Neapolitan lyricist and dialect poet, playwright, and
journalist.
105
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’, p. 57.
239
sceneggiata, a process that is in itself very Shakespearian. Also, he
alternated high, poetical language with dialect, another element that was
often present in Shakespeare’s plays, and high forms of music, like
Tchaikovsky, jazz or Schönberg, and popular, like the Neapolitan ballad. As
if this was not enough, Shakespeare’s words are interpersed with
Strindberg’s and Melville’s.106 And some of Lear’s lines are recited in
Neapolitan!107 Did people understand this unusual Shakespeare? I think that
a comment made by Bucci in the interview can provide a satisfactory
answer. Drawing another parallel between Shakespeare’s theatre and Leo’s,
she affirmed that:
quello di Shakespeare [era] un mondo molto vivo, molto carnale. In
molti strati di pubblico, indipendentemente dal livello culturale,
c’era meno annebbiamento intellettuale per quanto riguarda proprio
la percezione animale dei riti comunitari come il teatro.
Shakespeare’s world was very alive, very carnal. In many layers of
audience, independently from the cultural level, there was less
intellectual clouding as far as the animal perception of communal
rites, like theatre, is concerned.
What I think Bucci means, is that, today – at least in Italy – we tend
to watch theatre performances too much through the filter of our brain, our
intellect. This is partly due to our school education, which – as I have
already explained in the section on the New Theatre – neglects any art
practice, be it drama, or playing music, creative writing, or painting. 108 Art
in the Italian education system means studying history of art. The Italian
school, too often criticized by everybody, offers a good level of cultural
preparation but, generally, does not provide the instruments to develop an
artistic sensitivity, or artistic skills. Going to the theatre, therefore (I am not
106
Melville quotes and alludes to King Lear extensively in Moby Dick.
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 57.
108
See my discussion at p. 211.
240
107
talking of commercial theatre or entertainment), becomes a mainly cerebral
activity, while the perception of the quality of the performance, of its
‘magnetism’ (Bucci) plays a limited role. Now, I guess that it is this
perception of the energy on the stage, of the magnetism, of the impact on
our senses and on our emotions, that de Berardinis and Peragallo were
trying to transmit with their performances. One could object that Strindberg
or Melville, Tchaikovsky, Schönberg or jazz music are not easy,
straightforward forms of art, but Shakespeare is not either. So, how did
illiterate people understand Shakespeare? They certainly did not understand
everything, but they shared in the energy flow on the stage, in the scenes of
love or of violence, in the sounds, the noise, the music. And, as we know,
the plays were received on different levels according to the cultural level of
the spectators. De Berardinis himself spoke of the ‘four traditional levels of
reading, (…) which manage to cover the entire range of available
possibilities and reach all levels of the audience’, adding that this was
typical of Shakespeare’s theatre.109
The mid-1980s were the years of the Shakespearian trilogy: Amleto
(I version 1984, II version 1985), King Lear: studi e variazioni (1985), and
La Tempesta (1986). All of these plays are seen by de Berardinis as a
journey of the protagonist. Hamlet, for him, is the actor who tries ‘to be’
rather than ‘to act’, who does not interpret but is what he is. Lear makes a
journey ‘in search of himself, towards his reintegration, through madness
and beyond illusion or appearances’.110 Prospero, at the end of the play,
transcends human limits and acquires a higher consciousness. Shakespeare
himself, de Berardinis seems to suggest, is on a journey that transforms him
from a playwright into a teacher, a kind of guru, I would say, who transmits
his wisdom. The common thread identified by the director in the three plays
is the protagonist’s search for himself, the need to explore himself and to get
109
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’, p. 56. It is not clear what de Berardinis
meant by the ‘four levels’. Bucci maintains that he referred to Auerbach’s La lettura di
Dante Alighieri. Whether this is true or not, he certainly referred to the idea of a theatre for
everybody that characterised Shakespeare’s time, when all social layers would attend the
playhouses.
110
Ibid., p. 60.
241
to know who he really is. Autobiographical elements are evident in the
productions. Since his adolescence, de Berardinis had had serious problems
with alcohol until he became a real alcoholic and was obliged to go into
rehabilitation. The trilogy corresponds to a new phase after the
detoxification. Like the three protagonists of the plays, de Berardinis was
trying to find his way again, and to reconstruct himself after a period of
destruction. In the same way, after destroying theatre with his desecrating
stagings, he began a cycle of reconstruction with productions that were not
so much characterized by contamination and conflating but focused on
Shakespeare. He staged Amleto in its entirety, following the Italian text
translated by Andrea Dallagiacoma, the result of which was a five-hour
performance! Both in Britain and in other countries, we are used to very
reduced theatrical versions of the play. Why did de Berardinis stage such a
long version? Because he wanted to try! This was theatre for him; it was
experimenting, taking risks and observing what happened. His theatre was a
very practical art, a form of exploration, and a means to acquire knowledge,
ideas that had not changed since the outset with Peragallo. It is difficult to
imagine what this Amleto was without having seen it. Manzella’s words
suggest a very dark and nocturnal play, whose darkness is broken by lights
coming from above or from the sides, in a kind of ‘vigile rêverie’ (‘vigil
rêverie’)111 with noises that could be heard from the distance, and characters
who appeared like shadows and, like Hamlet and Ophelia, ‘compiono lo
stesso tragitto su orbite distanti, senza intersezioni, dove uno sguardo
diventa il massimo contatto fisico ammesso’112 (‘make the same journey on
distant orbits, without intersections, where a look becomes the only
admissable physical contact’). The representation of roles is secondary,
there is very little concern with psychological characterization, ‘per lasciare
intatta la parola di Shakespeare’ (‘so that Shakespeare’s words remain
intact’).113
111
Manzella, La bellezza amara, p. 125.
Ibid., p. 126.
113
Ibid.
112
242
After Amleto, de Berardinis encountered King Lear again. In contrast
with the 1973 staging, the focus this time was on Shakespeare’s drama, but
de Berardinis made some cuts to Andrea Dallagiacoma’s translation, as he
saw the play as four big blocks: the love test; Gloucester’s blinding; the
tempest; and the final scene. The character and the story of Lear were
central for de Berardinis, and he saw the subplot and all the other characters
as projections of Lear, who makes a journey from an unreal world to the
world of reality, in a tortuous search for his true self. The movement from
illusion to reality is represented through various choices. At the beginning
of the play Lear wears a very long beard – like a kind of mask –which, from
the scene of the tempest, will disappear. Far from being an emblem of age,
or of power and authority, the mask is clearly false and marks the fiction of
theatre. It is just what can be found under the beard that de Berardinis
wanted to explore, and he did so by getting rid of it pretty soon.
Figure 17: Leo de Berardinis as Lear
The scenic space is divided in two with the stage being the place of
illusion and appearances, and the pit, freed from the seats that were replaced
with a little balcony at the back of the auditorium, as the heath, the place of
reality. But it is not only Lear who makes this journey. Lear is also the actor
who does not want to ‘wear a mask’, but wants to be himself, to express
himself on the stage. Wearing a mask is not only a metaphor. De Berardinis
and his actors often used masks on the stage, and they did so in this
243
production.114 In a video that can be found on YouTube, de Berardinis
explains the use of the mask: as we know, wearing a mask requires a
different kind of acting, as the actor needs to accentuate the body’s
expressivity to counterbalance always tried to avoid, but what is more
interesting is the following:
togliendosi la maschera l’attore capisce che lui è tutto una maschera.
A quel punto è diventato veramente un attore. Tutto ciò fluisce con
naturalezza
poetica
(…),
e
non
rappresentazione, in quel momento sei.
ti
preoccupi
più
della
115
Taking off the mask, the actor understands that he himself is a mask.
At that point he has really become an actor. All this flows with
poetical naturalness, and you do not worry any more about
representation, in that moment you are.
Bucci remembers that she was the first to take off her mask during
an improvisation. ‘Ti togli la maschera e chi sei? Quante altre te ne puoi
togliere per arrivare a un grado zero?’ (‘You take off the mask and who are
you? How many more can you take off to get to a degree zero?’). What de
Berardinis’s and Bucci’s words suggest, I think, is again the wish to be
rather than to act; the actor does not represent, he (or she) is. Bucci also
affirms that, of course, there were roles, there were characters but, in
comparison with the director’s theatre, there was much less concern with the
idea of ‘entering the character’ in Stanislavskian terms. Like in all the
previous and successive productions, instead, words and their sound were
fundamental, in a kind of acting that Bucci defines as ‘musical’, and that
was characteristic of the New Theatre. The actors played big guitars with a
114
The use of the mask certainly bears the influence of various theatrical traditions, such as
Greek theatre or Japanese theatre. Strongest of all, however, must have been the influence
of the commedia dell’arte, I believe, as it is to this very Italian tradition that de Berardinis’s
theatre is very much indebted.
115
Leo de Berardinis, King LeoR, produced by Raffaele Rago, directed and edited by
Emilio Battista, Patrizia Stellino, Silvia Storelli (Ecipar – Cineteca di Bologna) (1996).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCkRa0ZZCb0&feature=relmfu [accessed 15 April
2012] (part 4 of 5).
244
bow, and the tempest was evoked by lines in English from the playtext that
they spoke on the microphone like the instruments in a piece of chamber
music.
In the interview with De Marinis, de Berardinis defines his reading
of King Lear as ‘teleological’:
It sees an end to things. As absurd and unreal as Lear’s journey can
seem to the eyes of the world, for me everything in it follows a
precise logic, even if it is not immediately obvious. For me, Cordelia
exists, Edgar exists, everyone exists only because Lear saves
himself.116
These ideas were prompted by De Marinis’s suggestion that de Berardinis’s
King Lear differred significantly from Brook’s, and also, from Kott’s
pessimistic and absurdist interpretation. On the contrary, de Berardinis
affirms that the world appears absurd to those who cannot see, but it was not
absurd to Shakespeare. It is up to us, therefore, to see the truth beyond the
semblance of absurdity. And he concludes his ideas challenging Brook:
If Shakespeare is read according to the four levels of meaning, on the
literal level you can indeed talk of a tragedy of ingratitude: but there
are other readings on other levels and Brook will have stopped at one
of these ... .117
I do not feel like supporting de Berardinis’s criticism of Brook, but I
think that his statement is a confirmation of what I wrote in the conclusion
of chapter 3. When a director transforms a text into physicality on the stage,
he inevitably gives his reading of the play, and this is as valid for a director
like Strehler, as for de Berardinis, or Brook. All of them staged King Lear,
but the three productions are completely different from one another.
116
117
De Marinis, ‘From Shakespeare to Shakespeare’, p. 62.
Ibid.
245
It is noteworthy that, in the discussion with de Berardinis, De
Marinis refers to the last lines of the play, attributing them to Edgar, without
considering at all the Q version in which they are pronounced by Albany.
He is referring to Dallagiacoma’s translation, but the fact that there is no
mention of the Q text, means that, probably, there was still not much
awareness of the issue in Italy in the mid-1980s. Instead, De Marinis points
out how Dallagiacoma’s translation differs from the original, thus providing
a more optimistic interpretation of the last lines: ‘We that are young / Shall
never see so much, nor live so long’118 is translated as: ‘Noi che siamo
giovani / non lasceremo / che si vedano più simili sventure.’119 And this, in
English, would be: ‘We that are young / Will not allow / Such misfortunes
to be seen again’. Although Strehler’s and de Berardinis’s stagings were
completely different, we observe that they agreed on the general meaning of
Lear’s story, that is the idea of a journey that Lear has to make to find his
true self, and both directors saw the tragedy as necessary to set up a better
future. The idea of a redemptive journey was very much part of de
Berardinis’s biography in that period, as I pointed out above, and it is in this
light that I understand his reading of King Lear. It was no longer the anger
and the rebellion of the youth, but the search for something more stable after
a life of excess.
After finding his true self, man goes beyond human limits and
reaches a higher level of consciousness in the production of La Tempesta.
Prospero abandons the human condition, as he has completed the journey he
(or de Berardinis we could say) embarked on when he was still Hamlet.
Hamlet tried to fight against the world of appearances represented by the
court, Lear found reality through madness, and Prospero goes beyond. In a
metaphorical way we can say that he abandons Caliban and acquires Ariel.
In the playtext Caliban is actually abandoned, while Ariel is set free. It is the
118
Shakespeare, King Lear, 5.3.324-325, ed. R. A. Foakes, Arden Shakespeare, 3 rd series
(London: Thomson, 1977).
119
In De Marinis, ‘Da Shakespeare a Shakespeare: intorno al superamento del teatro
mediante del teatro’, Acquario, 8, 9, 10, (May 1986), 55-71 (p. 71). Strehler chose a very
similar translation for these two lines ‘Noi che siamo giovani / Non permetteremo / Che si
vedano più simili sventure’. See Chapter 3.5, (p. 152).
246
‘Ariel quality’, I would say, that Prospero acquires. As Ariel is sent back to
the elements, de Berardinis’s Prospero embarks on a journey into the higher
spheres.
The chaos that characterized de Berardinis’s and Peragallo’s first
productions, with objects scattered on the stage, the torches, the wires, the
bidet, the recorders, the objets trouvès, is replaced in the trilogy by a bare
stage, either dark or white, with few props of geometrical shape. Lights are
now used to split, enlarge or contract the scenic space. Acting becomes
much more self-contained and absorbed, as opposed to the excesses of the
first performances with Peragallo. From the excesses of youth, de Berardinis
reaches a kind of calm and peace in the stagings of the trilogy, and sees
Shakespeare as a companion, a life teacher, a plant which provides him with
sap to represent his own and man’s life journey – or life cycle, I would say –
on the stage. When I asked Bucci to what extent de Berardinis’s stagings
could be considered Shakespearian she gave me the following answer: ‘Era
Leo de Berardinis che incontra Shakespeare. Con un gruppo di attori
incoraggiati a essere svegli e vigili che incontrano Shakespeare’. (‘It was
Leo de Berardinis who meets Shakespeare. With a group of actors
encouraged to be alert and vigilant who meet Shakespeare’.) This takes us
back to Schino’s definition of the relationship of the nineteenth-century
Great Actors with Shakespeare’s plays as ‘a meeting place’.120 I find it
remarkable that the scholar and the actress used just the same words
(meeting, meets), though one was referring to actors who lived over 150
years ago, the other to one who has not been dead for long. We could say
that the starting point was the same, but the way in which the Great Actors
on the one hand, and de Berardinis on the other, developed their relationship
with Shakespeare, differed to a great extent. However, it cannot be
overlooked that in both cases the focus was on the actor and on his desire to
express himself with very little regard for the overall plan of the play.
De Berardinis’s relationship with Shakespeare continued into the
1990s with a new phase, some new actors, and a return to more extreme
120
For more about this see Chapter 2.1, (pp. 85 and 95)
247
forms of contamination and more ‘open’ stagings. I suppose that was the
kind of theatre that de Berardinis really loved and, if the trilogy probably
responded to a very personal need to reconstruct his life through the
reconstruction of his stagings, by the first decades of the 1990s, he was
strong enough to deconstruct again, to mix, to blend, to add rather than to
subtract. In Totò principe di Danimarca, staged in Asti in October 1990, de
Berardinis went back to a composite and heterogeneous theatrical language,
as the title once again suggests.121 Totò and Hamlet: the Italian prince of
laughter and the melancholic Danish prince in a wish to blend comic and
tragic again, building on Shakespeare’s own habitual blending of the two
genres. But that is not all: Totò also becomes Charlot (this is the Italian
name for the ‘little tramp’ played by Charlie Chaplin) and quotes Eduardo
De Filippo in some of his gestures, and Petrolini.122 It is a staging that is
constituted by various layers: there is the actor de Berardinis who plays the
role of Antonio Esposito (Totò), and Esposito/Totò who wants to play the
role of Hamlet. But, from time to time, de Berardinis leaves his role and
talks to the audience like an actor of the ‘avanspettacolo’.123 Or is it
Esposito who suspends the narration of facts to start a dialogue with the
audience? This way of getting out of the character only occurs during the
comic parts of the staging, whereas it is missing when scenes from Hamlet
are performed. There is a double ending: Hamlet dies, but Totò does not.
Ophelia dies in a video, but her ‘double’, the florist of Chaplin’s City Lights,
121
Totò (1898-1967) was an Italian comedian, film and theatre actor, writer, singer, and
songwriter. He is considered one of the greatest Italian artists of the twentieth century.
Classified as an heir of the commedia dell’arte, he has been compared to such figures as
Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
122
Sir Charles Spencer ‘Charlie’ Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English comic actor, film
director, and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. Eduardo De
Filippo (1900-1984) was an Italian actor, playwright, screenwriter, author, and poet. His
best known plays are Filumena Marturano and Napoli Milionara. Among his works, he
also translated The Tempest in Neapolitan. Ettore Petrolini (1884-1936) was an Italian
actor, playwright, writer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the best representatives
of variety theatre.
123
An Italian theatrical genre that developed between the 1930s and the 1950s. Closely
related to the variety show, it features a diverse mixture of music, ballet, sketch comedy,
and other forms of entertainment.
248
is still alive.124 The production closes with Totò and the florist walking
towards the back of the stage, with Totò who has now become Charlot with
his typical bowler hat and his characteristic unsteady gait. Fundamental, as
usual, is the use of various music genres: from Wagner to Verdi and
Mendelssohn. And then American songs alternating with Neapolitan songs
from Raffaele Viviani to Pino Daniele.125 Even the scenic space is organized
to include the two levels: a setting typical of Eduardo De Filippo’s comedy,
but with an always present skull of Yorick, the only element that evokes
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. All the elements typical of de Berardinis’s theatre
are present in this staging: a rather chaotic plot that comprises tragedy and
comedy; the reference to Hamlet together with the homage to some great
actors, Totò first of all, and then Petrolini, Eduardo and Charlot; high
culture represented by Hamlet’s soliloquies along with the popular culture
of Totò, the presence of very heterogeneous music; the combination of
acting, singing, dancing, that also characterized Shakespeare’s theatre. It
was again a kind of theatre that required the audience to use their
imagination, to find their way in the cluster of quotes, inserts, theatre and
music genres, and acting styles, but it was certainly a kind of theatre that
shakes, that has an impact, that does not leave the audience indifferent.
In 1996 and in 1998, de Berardinis staged King Lear again. The first,
King Lear n. 1 (King Lear no. 1) was premièred at Urbino Teatro Raffaello
Sanzio, on 10th December 1996; the second, Lear Opera, was staged at
Bologna Teatro Laboratiorio San Leonardo on 21 April 1998. Both
productions blended scenes from Shakespeare’s King Lear with quotations
from other sources. In the first, there was a clear reference to the commedia
dell’arte, with the actors who wear a mask and act on a small stage at the
back of the main stage. On the left hand side of the stage there is a round
table and above it a luminous sign, the sign of Mexico bar. There are sitting
124
City Lights is a 1931 silent and romantic film written by, directed by, and starring
Charlie Chaplin.
125
Raffaele Viviani (1888-1950) was an Italian poet, composer, and theatre actor. He wrote
several Neapolitan songs. Pino Daniele (born 1955) is a Neapolitan singer, composer, and
musician. His music ranges from pop, to blues, jazz, and Middle Eastern music.
249
de Berardinis/Lear and Donato Castellaneta/Gloucester who watch what is
happening on the small stage and make their comments, and de Berardinis
speaks Lear’s lines in Neapolitan. The music ranges again from Verdi’s
melodrama to Mozart’s Requiem, from Billie Holiday’s songs, to Moni
Ovadia’s, Enzo Jannacci’s El portava i scarp del tennis (He was wearing
trainers) in Milanese and Enzo Moscato’s Indifferentemente (Indifferently)
in Neapolitan.126 Bucci remembers a performance that took place at Firenze
Teatro alla Pergola, where a very bourgeois audience walked out at the end
of the first part. The positive aspect of it was, according to Bucci, the fact
that, from that moment on, a different kind of public started to attend the
theatre for the successive performances, a public that would normally have
never gone to La Pergola. In Lear Opera, King Lear is contaminated with
Hamlet and The Tempest on the one hand, and with Neapolitan farce on the
other. Following a similar idea of high and low, tragic and comic, and as in
King Lear n. 1 (King Lear no. 1), Mozart’s Requiem and Verdi’s Otello
alternate with Moscato’s and Jannacci’s songs, along with Moni Ovadia’s
klezmer music, and Tema by I Giganti.127
Figure 18: Leo de Berardinis as Lear in Lear Opera
126
Moni Ovadia (born 1946) is an actor, musician, and theatrical author. He was born in
Bulgaria to a Jewish family who moved to Milan in Ovadia’s early childhood. His best
known theatre production is Oylem Goylem (The world is dumb), where he also sang
klezmer music.
127
Enzo Jannacci (born 1935) is a singer, songwriter, actor, and comedian. He is considered
as a master of musical art, and cabaret. Enzo Moscato (born 1947) is a chansonnier, actor,
playwright, and theatre director. I Giganti was a group that was created in 1959, and
reached great success in 1966 with the song Tema.
250
In these productions of the 1990s, among the last that de Berardinis
directed before going into a coma during a simple operation in 2001 from
which he never recovered, there seems to be a return to the years of his
youth with Peragallo. Certainly that is partly true, as these last stagings of
Shakespeare’s plays were very much open works as the first were. Yet,
quite rightly I think, Oliviero Ponte di Pino traces a new element in these
productions, a higher form of wisdom. He compares de Berardinis with a
shaman, who is invaded by the characters’ wisdom and poetry and, through
his work on the stage, transmits them to the audience. 128 Shakespeare,
therefore, is a master or a guide, who helps de Berardinis in his journey to
wisdom and, through him, helps the audience too. But life is also made of
laughter, of materiality, of mistakes, of falls. Thus we have the comic gags,
the farce, the parody, and self-parody, in very Shakespearian terms.
**********
When I asked Bucci whether she thinks that de Berardinis used
Shakespeare’s texts are pre-texts for very personal productions, she was
very firm in replying that de Berardinis’s respect for the playwright and for
his words is undeniable. She added that what made these stagings really
Shakespearian was: ‘l’intensità della relazione che [de Berardinis] chiedeva
a se stesso e a noi quando stavamo dentro quelle parole, quei pensieri, quelle
relazioni tra i personaggi’ (‘the intensity of connection that [de Berardinis]
asked of himself and of us when we were inside those words, those
thoughts, those relationships between characters’). As I wrote in my
discussion of the 1984 production of Amleto, Manzella affirmed that de
Berardinis kept Shakespeare’s words intact. And, in her master’s thesis Leo-
128
Oliviero Ponte di Pino ‘La sapienza di Shakespeare (e di Leo de Berardinis): appunti su
Lear Opera’, ateatro: webzine di cultura teatrale, 47.7 http://www.olivieropdp.it/ [accessed
15 April 2012] .
251
Lear: ‘King Lear’ secondo Leo de Berardinis (Leo-Lear: ‘King Lear’
according to Leo de Berardinis), Rosita Oriolo speaks of de Berardinis’s
‘capacità di restituire al teatro la purezza dei versi shakespeariani’
(‘capability to give back to theatre the purity of Shakespeare lines’). 129 De
Berardinis’s commitment to Shakespeare’s plays was life-long and his love
for them was clear. He mainly read the texts in translation, but used to meet
the translators, spoke with them and compared his ideas with theirs. He also
compared the translated texts with the English versions. Yet his approach
was very different from Strehler’s, and his main concern was not that of
‘serving the text’ and rendering it on the stage – as much as possible – as it
is on the page. ‘It was de Berardinis who meets Shakespeare’, Bucci said,
and who, through the relationship with Shakespeare’s plays, developed and
refined his own idea of theatre.
People who attended de Berardinis’s productions of Shakespeare’s
plays would have been disappointed if they expected to see ‘a textual (or
literary) Shakespeare up there on the stage’,130 but they certainly saw great
theatre, a theatre that has an impact, that transforms, and that is not easily
forgotten when the performance is over. It is undeniable that it was a kind of
theatre that required the audience to know Shakespeare’s texts (and not only
these), to use their imagination, and to find their way in the cluster of quotes
and in the commixture of different artistic languages and artistic genres. It is
inevitable, therefore, to use words like ‘appropriation’ and ‘adaptation’ for
de Berardinis’s theatre. Yet, did Shakespeare not appropriate and adapt? I
have already discussed the issue of authenticity and of what we need to keep
in mind when using phrases like ‘Shakespeare’s words’ or ‘Shakespeare’s
textual original’ in the previous chapter. In the afterword of the book Worldwide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance, edited
by Sonia Massai, Barbara Hodgdon concludes that Shakespeare himself
might be defined as ‘The Great Appropriator’ and ‘The Great Adapter’.131
129
Rosita Oriolo, Leo-Lear: ‘King Lear’ secondo Leo de Berardinis (master’s thesis,
Università degli studi di Bari, 1997-98), p.11.
130
World-wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance, p. 158.
131
Ibid.
252
Shakespeare’s plays were the outcome of his meeting with various sources,
through which he developed and refined his idea of theatre. So, could we
say that de Berardinis’s artistic process was closer to Shakespeare’s than
Strehler’s? We are in the presence of two great artists, whose commitment
to Shakespeare was life-long, and who never stopped exploring his plays.
Yet, they had very different ideas about theatre and, as a consequence, their
work on the English playwright was different too. Strehler was the main
representative of the director’s theatre; de Berardinis felt much closer to the
tradition of the actor’s theatre. In the Italian director’s theatre, the written
text was central, and the acting, as well as the staging, were considered as
instrumental to the transformation of the written page into theatrical action.
De Berardinis, instead, along with other artists who are now regarded as
representatives of the New Theatre, did not see the ‘truth’ of theatre in the
text, which, in his productions, became one of the elements of the artistic
creation that is theatre. Shakespeare, therefore, was for de Berardinis a
teacher and a companion, whose plays he explored in order to understand
what theatre is and, at the same time, who he was, in a long journey of
search for his true self. A return to the actor’s theatre – though in very
different forms – as I discussed. It is not by chance that de Berardinis’s
homage to the great Shakespearian characters, Hamlet in primis, but also
Lear, and Prospero, went along with his homage to great actors, like
Chaplin, Totò, De Filippo, and Petrolini. These were actors who were real
artists, and who developed their own aesthetic idea through their acting.
If de Berardinis’s productions were not based on a philological
reading of Shakespeare’s texts, there were many elements in them and in his
theatre that are very Shakespearian. One of these is the idea of a theatre
company as a sort of community, of family I would say, where the author
(or the director) collaborates with the actors in a mutual exchange of ideas,
and of creativity. Fundamental also was the commixture of various artistic
forms, like acting, singing, and dancing in a composite and heterogeneous
theatrical language, that Bucci defined as very ‘alive and carnal’.
Commixture also meant bringing together high and popular forms of art; the
Shakespearian sublime and the tradition of popular Neapolitan theatre;
253
poetical language and everyday language, or dialects; comic and tragic
elements, just as Shakespeare creatively mixed all of these ingredients.
Finally, but not in order of importance, is the idea that a work of art is
received on various levels, which makes it possible to reach all the layers of
the audience.
At this point I want to highlight something that may sound
paradoxical. Strehler’s theatre did not share much with Shakespeare’s in
terms of the work with the company, and the work needed to take the play
from page to stage. Yet, through a rather different process, the director
wished to give his audience productions that – as far as possible – were
faithful to Shakespeare’s original texts. Instead, the work of de Berardinis
shared more with Shakespearian practices. Yet, despite the similarities, the
result were productions that – as I have extensively illustrated – offered very
free interpretations of the playtexts. It is as if for Strehler the spirit of
Shakespeare was encapsulated in the text, whereas for de Berardinis (and
for Bene, as I will illustrate in the next section) it rested on Shakespeare’s
approach to theatre.
Most of the elements that informed the theatre of de Berardinis were
present in Bene’s theatre too, but – as we will see in the next section – the
two directors/actors also had some very different ideas. In fact, after a
collaboration for a Don Chisciotte (Don Quixote) in 1968, they decided to
go their own separate ways, despite their friendship and mutual respect.
4. 3. Carmelo Bene
Carmelo Bene was born in Campi Salentina, near Lecce, in 1937 and
died in Rome in 2002. His relationship with Shakespeare was a long one: it
spans the period from 1962, when he staged his first version of Amleto, to
1996, the year of his last version of Macbeth entitled Macbeth-Horror
254
Suite.132 Among his Shakespearian productions Hamlet was the most
recurrent. He staged five different theatre versions, a film, a television play,
a radio version, and two more theatre productions, one of which later
became a television play, and the other a compact disc.133 Bene also staged
Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Othello, and Macbeth,134 but I prefer only to
look at his various versions of Hamlet, as I believe that this play is the one
that, for reasons I will illustrate, best contributes to an explanation of Bene’s
work with Shakespeare’s plays. As I did with Leo de Berardinis, I also wish
to explore the elements of Bene’s theatre that make him a representative of
the New Theatre, and those that mark a very personal style that was new in
the panorama of Italian stagecraft, and that, so far, has not produced any
heirs. Once more in my discussion, I will address the issue of the director’s
and the actor’s theatre, in order to investigate how this man, who dared to
affirm: ‘Io sono Shakespeare’ (‘I am Shakespeare’),135 went back to the
Italian tradition of the actor’s theatre – as he never recognized the figure of
the director – just to deny it and to deny theatre in general. This may seem
132
Macbeth Horror Suite was staged on 30 September 1996 at Rome Teatro Argentina. Its
sources were Shakespeare but also Verdi. In the course of his career, Bene’s stagings (and
performances) became increasingly sonorous. The voice, sounds, and music always played
an important role in his productions, but in this and in Hamlet Suite they became
predominant. That is why he called these versions suites. But there was not only the sound
of music. Bene and Silvia Pasello (the only two actors) made sounds all through the
performance: they shouted, they faked an orgasm, they burped, and they mumbled. If this
was not enough, all the sounds were amplified by a powerful electronic machine.
133
The five theatre productions are: Amleto (1962); Amleto (1964); Basta, con un ‘Vi amo’
mi ero quasi promesso, Amleto o le conseguenze della pietà filiale (Enough: with a ‘I love
you’ I had nearly proposed, Hamlet or the Consequences of Filial Piety) da e di W.
Shakespeare a Jules Laforgue (from and by W. Shakespeare to Jules Laforgue) (1965);
Amleto o le conseguenze della pietà filiale da Laforgue (1967); Amleto di Carmelo Bene
[da Shakespeare a Laforgue] (1975). The film is Un Amleto di meno (One Hamlet Less)
(1973). The television play is Amleto di Carmelo Bene [da Shakespeare a Laforgue], which
was recorded in 1974 but broadcasted in 1978. The radio version was entitled Amleto da
William Shakespeare (Hamlet from William Shakespeare) (1974). The two theatre
productions Hommelette for Hamlet and Hamlet Suite (1987), later became respectively a
television play (recorded in 1987 and broadcasted in 1990) and a compact disc (1994). The
missing titles in English are given in the table at p. 7.
134
Romeo e Giulietta (storia di W. Shakespeare) (Romeo and Juliet [Story by William
Shakespeare]) (1976); Riccardo III (1977); Otello, o la deficienza della donna (Othello, or
the Woman’s Foolishness) (1979); Macbeth (1983).
135
Quoted in Baiardo and Trovato, Un classico del rifacimento: l’Amleto di Carmelo Bene,
p. 21.
255
paradoxical, but I hope that my discussion will reveal the coherence of such
an idea.
4.3.1 A General Overview of Bene’s Theatre
In his interesting essay ‘Carmelo Bene: Revolutionizing Tradition’, Joseph
Farrell affirms that: ‘Not only content with merely being resistant to
interpretation, Bene actively does all he can to fend off interpretation, to
ensure obscurity, to guarantee that no sequence of ideas or words can be
viewed as carrying rational meaning’.136 I believe that this affirmation
contains two important thoughts: the first is the fact that it is extremely
difficult to interpret Bene’s stagings of Shakespeare’s plays (and not only of
Shakespeare’s). The second is the awareness that Bene ‘actively’ did all he
could to defy any possible interpretation of his work. It is in that one word,
‘actively’ that I see the possibility of understanding – that is of interpreting
– the work of this protagonist of the Italian theatre (but also of culture in
general) of the twentieth century. Perhaps this last statement may seem as
obscure as Bene’s work and, probably, contradictory. How are we able to
interpret his work given that he actively did everything he could to make his
productions meaningless and irrational? At the same time, contradictory is
also the term that best describes Bene’s stagings: being contradictory in
order to give order and coherence. What I am trying to say is that, like
Polonius’s line ‘Though this be madness yet there is method in’t’,137 it is
possible to find method in Bene’s apparently meaningless, confusing, and
paradoxical productions. Also, it is important to say, at the beginning of this
discussion, that everything in his stagings – the actors’ movements and
gestures, their facial expressions, their voice, the choice of words, the stage
set, the props, the lights, the costumes, the music, and every other element
136
Farrell, ‘Revolutionizing Tradition’, p. 289.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Second Quarto, 2.2.202-203, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil
Taylor, Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: Methuen, 2006). From now on I will refer
to this edition.
256
137
that contributes to a mise-en-scène – aims to defy the idea of a naturalistic
theatre, of a theatre as a mirror of reality. When one keeps that in mind,
Bene’s productions start to make sense, although making sense of them was
not what this actor-director-author wanted. I hope that, at the end of this
section, I will have been able to give a clear view of what theatre was for
Bene, and of how he believed the classics, and Shakespeare most of all,
should be rendered on the stage.
Bene joined the Convegno di Ivrea, but could find an understanding
only with three other participants in the event: de Berardinis, Quartucci and
Ricci. He was also the protagonist of an unpleasant occurrence, as he
verbally attacked the theatre company ‘Gruppo d’Ottobre’ (‘October
Group’), when they made a parody of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the
founder of the Italian movement ‘Futurism’. Bene strenuously defended
Marinetti, as the ‘avanguardie storiche’, the avant-garde movements of the
first decades of the twentieth century, were the only ones that he recognized.
He could not find anything new in the movements of the 1960s.
Bene’s protest was a protest against the bourgeois consumer society,
where everything can be bought, and where even art becomes a product. But
his was not a kind of Marxist protest, rather it was the assertion of the
independence
of
art
from
commercial
logic.
He
believed
that
experimentation is banished in the consumer society, and homogenization
becomes king. He attacked the circuit of the official theatre, the ‘teatri
stabili’ (the publicly funded theatres), where the directors’ and managers’
main concern was that of selling tickets, with artistic choices made to attract
a middle-class audience with little concern about quality. His protest was
also a protest against the director’s theatre. The ideas expressed by Strehler,
according to whom both the director and the actors are at the service of the
author and of the text, repelled Bene, as he believed that the role of theatre
is not that of being faithful to the written text. Theatre is only and uniquely
art, ‘artificio’ (‘artifice’). What happens on the stage should amaze, stupefy,
puzzle, overwhelm, as the audience do not go to the theatre to see
themselves in a mirror, or to see a copy of reality. They go to see a work of
art, even if they are not able to make sense of it It should already be clear
257
that a production of Hamlet by Bene requires the audience to know the play
well and, as Farrell states, they should also ‘have the necessary training in
Bene’s works in order to decipher his lines’.138 To this I would add that it is
also important to be well acquainted with various literary and non-literary
sources, as Bene blends Shakespeare’s lines with poems by Italian poets like
Guido Gozzano, Freud’s ideas and, most of all, the story Hamlet ou les
suites de la piété filiale by Jules Laforgue.139 His various productions of
Hamlet contain many differences, and it would be wrong to generalize and
consider them a consistent body that summarizes his interpretation of
Hamlet. Yet the ideas that inform all of them do not change with the passing
of years, and every successive production becomes a variation on those
same themes and ideas. As a matter of fact, when a director goes back to the
same play – Strehler did the same – he does so because he wants to go
deeper and to improve.
Now, what are those ideas that inform all the productions of Bene’s
Hamlet? The first important thing to say – which may seem paradoxical
considering the number of Shakespearian adaptations he did – is that Bene
did not believe that it is possible to represent Shakespeare’s plays on the
stage today, as Shakespeare was also an actor and a capocomico (actormanager), and he wrote his plays for his company and for what theatre was
four hundred years ago:
Il Sogno di una notte di mezza estate, lo stesso Romeo e Giulietta,
sono stati teatro, e proprio per questo non lo sono più, non possono
più esserlo. Io non metto in scena Shakespeare – l’ho detto tante
volte – né una mia interpretazione o una lettura di Shakespeare, ma
un saggio critico su Shakespeare.140
Midsummer Night’s Dream, or even Romeo and Juliet, were theatre
and, for this reason, they are no more, they cannot be. I do not stage
138
Farrell, Carmelo Bene, p. 289.
I will expand on Gozzano and Laforgue further on in the section.
140
Bartalotta, Carmelo Bene e Shakespeare, pp. 13-14. Emphases original.
258
139
Shakespeare – I have said it many times – nor my interpretation or
my reading of Shakespeare, but a critical essay on Shakespeare.
This is an interesting approach to the problem of historical distance:
not an effort to reconstruct or a quest for authenticity, but a liberation to do
one’s own thing in one’s own time. What we can also infer from this
quotation is that he dispossessed critics of their role, as for him, the artist is
the critic. With a few exceptions, Bene’s relationship with critics was not a
good one, and often there were very sharp words on either side. Certainly it
must have been hard to interpret a Bene production, especially at the
beginning of his career. His theatre defied any interpretation and did not
surrender to any classification. As I wrote in the first section of this chapter,
most critics lacked the necessary tools and skills to classify the productions
of the new experimentalists, and, for this reason, they sometimes denigrated
what they probably were not able to understand.141
Bene also opposed Kott’s idea of Shakespeare our contemporary, as
Shakespeare, Bene seems to argue, is not our contemporary! So, what did he
mean when he said: ‘I am Shakespeare’? Certainly he wanted to provoke,
but he also wanted to explain something. He meant that, in order to
represent Shakespeare, you must be Shakespeare, that is you must take over
the role of author and ‘create’ your own Shakespeare.142 Echoes of Artaud’s
thoughts on theatre are strong:
That is, instead of harking back to texts regarded as sacred and
definitive, we must first break theatre’s subjugation to the text and
rediscover the idea of a kind of unique language somewhere in
between gesture and thought.143
141
During a television interview with Arnaldo Bagnasco at Mixer Cultura on 15 February
1987, Bene affirmed that the only critics are the artists, and then a real verbal fight began
between him and the two critics invited to the programme, Guido Almansi and Renzo Tian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG_SInlaW_U [accessed 10 December 2012]
142
Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue per Carmelo Bene, p. 59.
143
Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty. First Manifesto’, in The Theatre and Its
Double, transl. Victor Corti (London: John Calder, 1977), p. 68.
259
Disregarding the text, we intend to stage: (…) an adaptation of a
Shakespearian work, absolutely consistent with our present state of
confused state of mind.144
Such statements are contained in the 1932 First Manifesto of the
Theatre of Cruelty, ideas that Artaud did not put in practice, but that have
been and still are a source of inspiration for many theatre practitioners, Bene
included, as he affirmed in a television interview in 1987:
Io ho ripreso il discorso di Artaud. (…) E’ ora il caso di mettere un
po’ a fuoco cos’è la scrittura di scena (…) già però ventilata in
Shakespeare ed in tutto il teatro elisabettiano. Dopo circa quattro
secoli di teatro, di testo a monte, ecco finalmente la scrittura di scena
(…). La scrittura di scena è tutto quanto non è il testo a monte, è il
testo sulla scena.145
I have retrieved Artaud’s idea. (…) It is now necessary to explain
what scenic writing is (…) already suggested in Shakespeare’s theatre
and in all the Elizabethan theatre. After about four centuries of theatre,
of theatre based on the text beforehand, here is the scenic writing at
last. Scenic writing is all that is not the text beforehand, it is the text
on the stage.
The reference to Shakespeare is particularly interesting. It is a clear proof
that at least some of the protagonists of the theatrical revolution of the 1960s
looked back to Shakespeare.
I believe that when Bene states ‘I do not stage Shakespeare (…) nor
my interpretation or my reading of Shakespeare’ he also implies that –
similarly to de Berardinis – he shared a lot with Shakespeare: he identified
himself with him, a man who is an author, but also an actor; who considers
144
145
Ibid., p. 77.
Television interview with Arnaldo Bagnasco at Mixer Cultura.
260
the company like a collective, who does not distinguish between the written
word and its rendering on the stage, who draws from various sources to
create his own art work, who does everything, from writing the text to
whatever is needed to transform it into theatrical action. In the case of Bene
rather than talking of an author who is also an actor, I would speak of an
actor who is also the author of his stagings, and who is in charge of every
single aspect of the production. In an interview of 1978 Bene affirmed that
the ‘grande attore moderno’ (‘great modern actor’) must have all the skills
of the nineteenth-century actor. And he added:
Ancor meglio poi […] bisogna che abbia i requisiti di Richard
Burbage, di Shakespeare, cioè degli interpreti elisabettiani che erano
veramente completi, che pensavano a tutto, alle scene, alle luci, ai
costumi, oltre che al testo (…).146
Even better […] he [the actor] must have all the skills of Richard
Burbage, of Shakespeare, that is of the Elizabethan interpreters who
were really all rounded, who thought of everything, not only of the
text, but also of the stage sets, the lights, the costumes (…).
Elizabethan amphitheatre playhouses such as the Globe had no artificial
lighting, and minimal sets. So, we may think that this is a case of Bene
projecting his own experience and his idea of himself back onto the
Elizabethan scene. Certainly, the two traditions that he recognized were the
Italian nineteenth-century tradition of the Great Actor (despite fighting it at
the same time), which, in turn, looked back to the tradition of the commedia
dell’arte, and the Shakespearian tradition. Bene advocated a return to the
actor, and he wished to give him back his power, and the responsibility for
the staging and for all the choices made on the stage.
Another important element of Bene’s conception of theatre is that he
did not consider it as a mirror of reality. To this he opposed theatre as
146
In Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue, p. 34.
261
‘inutilità e gratuità’ (‘uselessness and gratuitousness’),147 which echoes the
idea of art as a form of pleasure carrying no meaning asserted by Oscar
Wilde, whom Bene profoundly admired.148 If theatre is not mimesis,
everything must be done in order to avoid it, and theatre becomes the
staging of the impossibility of producing a copy of anything beyond the
stage. This paradoxical idea was explored again and again, and every single
choice he made in his productions was aimed at showing the
‘irrapresentabilità’ (impossibility of being staged) of theatre. This is how
Farrell puts it:
All pretence at Realism has been banished from his cosmos. Neither
tragedy nor comedy are possible or conceivable in this world, nor is
any rapport with history or allegiance to ideology. Of its inner
essence, Bene’s work is, rather than plot and drama, a meditation on
theatre.149
If theatre is no longer mimesis and interpretation and if ultimately
the same existence of theatre is denied, the actor is no longer an actor, as he
cannot become a character and cannot tell a story. He cannot and does not
want to play a role! Therefore, theatre becomes the ‘teatro della nonrappresentazione’ (‘theatre of non-mimesis’), and the actor becomes a ‘nonattore’ (‘non-actor’).
Such ideas may find an analogue in non-figurative minimalism in the
visual arts and in music. Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951)
denied all possibility of narrative or external reference. John Cage’s 4'33''
(1952) consisted of the pianist sitting at the piano without touching the keys
for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.150 Yet I see an important
difference between these forms of art and Bene’s theatre. Bene’s theatre has
147
Giacché, Carmelo Bene: Antropologia di una macchina attoriale, p. 143.
The idea of the uselesness of art is clearly explained in Wilde’s Preface to his novel The
Picture of Dorian Gray.
149
Farrell, Carmelo Bene, p. 294.
150
It can be performed by any instrument or combination of instruments, and it has also
been performed by a full orchestra.
262
148
been defined by Giacché as the theatre of the ‘absence’, by which he means
absence of a narration, absence of communication between actors and
between actors and audience, absence of a structure, and destruction of the
language.151 This absence would correspond to Rauschenberg’s all-white
surfaces, or to Cage’s ‘non-music’. But Bene’s stage was not an empty
space (an all-white surface), and his plays were not deprived of music. It
was just the opposite: they were filled with music. What I mean by this is
that, in order to subtract, Bene added. He added quotes and interpolations
from various literary and non-literary sources, dissonant phonic elements,
and a huge number of objects on the stage that would hinder the characters’
movements. In this way neither the narrative nor the characters could
develop and, therefore, we are in the presence of an absence. But I will
return to this, as it is time to start the analysis of the various productions of
Hamlet.
4.3.2 Variations on Hamlet
The first question to be asked is: why Hamlet? What drew this man to
revisit the play again and again? A very short answer could be: because
Hamlet hesitates. Hamlet does not know what to do. He, Bene seems to
argue, has been given a burden that is too heavy for him: ‘The time is out of
joint; O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!’ (1.5.186-187). He
sees in Hamlet a man who would like to withdraw, in the same way as the
actor does not want to interpret his role and to tell the story of Hamlet.
Therefore, it is the metatheatrical quality of the play, the role that Hamlet
entrusts to the play within the play, that Bene stresses in his productions,
and we could say that his Hamlets (he played the title role in all his
productions) embody the actor-author who fights against the text. Hamlet
becomes a reflection upon theatre in Bene’s hands, a reflection on the
impossibility of representing and of giving an umpteenth interpretation of
151
For a detailed analysis of the idea of ‘absence’ see Giacché, Carmelo Bene, pp. 109-117.
263
the play, and Hamlet the protagonist is the character who does not want to
do what is required from being Hamlet. In the introduction to Hamlet Suite,
Bene expresses himself with the following words:
Prima delle sonate per pianola a quattro mani con Jules Laforgue,
m’è stato sempre chiaro che per disamletizzarsi integralmente, non
sarebbe bastata una soltanto, brutale esecuzione.152
Before playing piano duets with Laforgue, it was always clear to me
that, in order to give up Hamlet’s role in full, one brutal performance
only would not have been enough.
And he also affirms: ‘Per me il teatro, se vuoi la definizione, è impasse’ (‘If
you want a definition, for me theatre is impasse’) and Hamlet is nothing but
‘un saggio sull’impasse’ (‘an essay on impasse’).153 This is fundamental, as
we will see in a more detailed analysis of some of these productions:
impasse seems to be king in Bene’s Hamlets. Every single choice is made to
emphasise this impasse, to the disappointment of the audience who, rather
than watching the development of a story, witnessed continuous
interruptions, actions that never fully developed, props that were on the
stage to block the way, cumbersome costumes that hampered the actors’
movements. And they listened to interrupted lines that were often whispered
or even stammered, to make the understanding difficult! All of this is what
Bene called ‘la sospensione del tragico’ (‘the suspension of the tragic’): no
action can develop, as it is denied and obstructed by acts that are in its
way.154
It is not easy to find a path through the intricacies of the several
versions of Hamlet that Bene staged. What is immediately clear from the
titles Bene used is that we are presented with very personal re-writings of
Shakespeare’s text, which is not the only source of Bene’s appropriations.
152
Carmelo Bene, Opere: con l’Autografia di un ritratto (Milano: Bompiani, 1995) p. 1351.
Quoted in Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue, p. 86.
154
Bene, Opere, p. XIII.
264
153
The first two productions still carry the title Amleto, but from the third
(1965) Laforgue’s story makes its appearance, and the name of Laforgue is
mentioned next to Shakespeare’s, which disappears in the fourth version,
and the only source that is recognized in the title is Laforgue. In the fifth the
appropriation is complete, as the play becomes Amleto di Carmelo Bene (da
Shakespeare a Laforgue). Even the following versions I mentioned at the
beginning of this section bear various titles, none of which is simply
Hamlet. We are in the presence of another appropriator here, but I have
already discussed the idea of Shakespeare as the ‘Great Appropriator’
(Hodgdon) in the section dedicated to de Berardinis.155 I have also dealt
with the issue of what we mean by a play by Shakespeare in my analysis of
Strehler’s Re Lear and of the consequent paradox existing between directors
who claim to be servants of the author and of the text, and the fluidity of the
process that went from the first performance of a play by Shakespeare to its
printing.156 As for Hamlet, the editors’ task is even harder than with other
plays: of the earliest printed texts, three stand out as being significant: Q1 of
1603, Q2 of 1604-5 and F of 1623. This is not at all irrelevant if we think
that Q2 is approximately double the length of Q1, or that F is a little shorter
than Q2. Also, despite being so long, Q2 lacks some famous passages of F’s
dialogue (among which is Hamlet’s observation that ‘Denmark’s a prison’
at 2.2.242. The whole passage missing in Q2 is, in F, 2.2.238-267), while F
lacks some passages of Q2 (like Hamlet’s soliloquy ‘How all occasions do
inform against me’ at 4.4.31-65 in Q2).157 The two Q versions are different
not only in length. Q1 is considered a ‘bad quarto’ and adds yet more
complications to our knowledge of the text – e.g. a very scrambled version
of ‘To be, or not to be’, yet in the position in the play where most modern
directors prefer to place this soliloquy. Q2, instead, has high status,as it is
thought to be based on a manuscript in Shakespeare’s own hand, that is a
155
See Chapter 4.2.2, (pp. 252-253).
See Chapter 3.5, (pp. 144-148).
157
Shakespeare, Hamlet, F 2.2.238-267 can be found in appendix 1, pp.466-467.
265
156
‘foul paper’.158It is clear that the idea of authenticity loses consistency in the
presence of all this.
In all the writings about Bene’s Hamlets there is hardly anything to
be found about the issue of translation. I believe that Bene must have used
translations made from conflated versions of the play in English, as this is
what could be found in Italy. It is interesting to notice that Lombardo’s
Amleto published by Feltrinelli in 1995 was still based on the conflated
version of Hamlet edited by T.J.B. Spencer for the New Penguin
Shakespeare.159 Certainly Bene was very much concerned with the issue of
translation: Petrini, for example, notices that for the character of Polonius,
he used nineteenth-century Italian, as he wanted him to express himself in
very pompous/bombastic language, which we can read as an interesting
example of use of inauthentic language to be authentic to the spirit and
effect of the play.160
When analysing Bene’s Hamlet, the first problem is to decide how
many, and which versions we should choose. Petrini’s book considers the
theatre versions, Baiardo and Trovato’s only refer to non-theatrical ones. It
is certainly important to say from the beginning that, though in the presence
of a single play, there are many differences among the various versions. Yet,
as I have already affirmed, there are elements that never disappear: we could
perhaps argue that those elements are developed with increasing depth as if,
in the course of the years, Bene started from an idea and worked again and
again to bring it to perfection.
I have been thinking carefully about which direction I should take
and what choice I should make. I finally came to the conclusion that I would
investigate the television production Amleto di Carmelo Bene (da
Shakespeare a Laforgue) broadcasted on 22nd April 1978 on the second
channel of RAI state television, and which recalls closely the 1975 theatre
158
The best account of the complex textual issues around Hamlet is the introduction to the
Arden edition by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, which I am using for my discussion of
Bene’s Hamlets. See, in particular, pp. 8-13, pp.74-86, and pp. 465-486 in the appendices.
159 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. T. J. B. Spencer, (London: Penguin Books, 1980).
For more about Lombardo see footnote 5 at p. 19.
160 Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue, p. 101.
266
version. One practical reason for my choice is the fact that there are no
videos of the previous ones. Watching a video allows me to give a more
personal and more detailed interpretation of the production. Furthermore, as
I have written, this version recalls closely the 1975 theatre version,
differently from other productions like Un Amleto di meno (One Hamlet
less) that was created uniquely for the cinema. This is important because it
is theatre stagings that I am discussing in my research. Lastly, but not in
order of importance, this version gives me the possibility of offering a
precise idea of Bene’s theatre as a blend of various sources that interpolate
with the main text (Shakespeare’s). His first production, for example, was
only based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and, although there are already typical
elements of Bene’s theatre, there is no commixture with other texts. After
this version of Hamlet I will also refer – though in less detail – to
Hommelette for Hamlet and to Hamlet Suite, which mark a substantial
change in comparison to the previous productions.
At this point it is necessary to write a few words about Laforgue. He
was a Franco-Uruguayan poet who was born in Montevideo in 1860 and
died in Paris in 1887. Among his works there is a collection of philosophical
short stories entitled Les Moralités légendaires, which was published in
1887 and contains his re-writing of Hamlet – ‘Hamlet ou les suites de la
piété filiale’. The story has very little to share with Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In Laforgue’s work, Hamlet becomes a poet, who forgets his revenge
against Claudius and decides to leave Denmark to travel to Paris with Kate
(there is an allusion to Kate in The Taming of the Shrew), the leading lady of
the theatre company arrived in Elsinore. The story keeps the tragic ending,
as Hamlet is reached by Laertes, the true avenger, who kills him. In
Laforgue’s symbolism, Hamlet’s death stands for the defeat of the decadent
artist and, as Petrini affirms, of the modern artist tout court.161 The defeat of
the artist is also present in Bene’s productions, along with a protest against
bourgeois art and against its commodification. As in Laforgue, the death of
all the characters, and of Hamlet above all at the end of the play, suggests
161
Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue, p. 70.
267
the failure of art and the defeat of the artist in the consumer society, an idea
that Bene also drew from Shakespeare, as he saw in Shakespeare’s play the
function of art as critical conscience in society at a time when the triumph of
the bourgeoisie was imminent.162
Laforgue’s story is told in the form of a parody, a characteristic that
is present in Bene’s production as well. What is interesting to notice is that
Laforgue transforms Shakespeare’s play into non-dramatic prose, and Bene
then transforms Laforgue’s non-dramatic prose story into drama again. It
was not only the theme of the failure of the artist that must have fascinated
Bene, but also the metatheatrical quality of Laforgue’s work, despite being
in non-dramatic prose. Laforgue’s poet becomes an actor in Bene’s play, the
actor who is killed at the end because no staging of a text and no
interpretation is possible in Bene’s theatre of the ‘irrapresentabilità’.
My analysis of the first part of this production will be very detailed,
while I will give a shorter summary of the second. Bene’s production starts
with a voice off repeating again and again a few phrases: ‘Io sono l’anima di
tuo padre’ (‘I am thy father’s spirit’ [1.5.9]) is repeated nine times; ‘Se mai
mi amasti’ (‘If thou didst ever thy dear father love’ [1.5.23]) is repeated
seven times; ‘Vendica il mio assassinio’ (‘Revenge his foul and most
unnatural murder!’ [1.5.25]) is repeated seven times; ‘Addio’ (‘Adieu’
[1.5.91]) is repeated nine times; and ‘Ricordati di me’ (‘Remember me’
[1.5.91]) is repeated three times. It is almost like a tic, probably used to
stress the obligations and imperatives upon Hamlet. The tone of the voice is
very plain and monotonous. Immediately after that, Hamlet speaks his first
‘soliloquy’, which has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s soliloquies. In fact
it is taken from Laforgue. Hamlet says that, at the beginning, he
remembered the horrid event, but he has now forgotten his murdered father,
his prostituted mother, and his throne, as he has started to enjoy the play.
The idea of the theatre within the theatre is developed further in the next
scene, where a group of actors are packing and unpacking trunks each one
bearing the label ‘Paris’ (following Laforgue). A dialogue between Kate and
162
Ibid., p. 57.
268
Hamlet follows, in which the former clearly refers to the role that Hamlet
has written for her, thus recognising him as the author of the play. Hamlet
promises her that he will read the whole play to her and, after affirming ‘Me
ne fotto del mio trono’ (‘I don’t give a fuck about my throne’), he tells her
that they will leave and see the world together. The last words are: ‘Parigi,
vita mia: a noi due!’ (‘Paris, my life: now it is between you and me’). Once
again the source is Laforgue with the exception of the last statement that
comes from Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot). Soon after, we
see Claudius who gives Hamlet some money, in order to corrupt him and
avoid being murdered. The only character who seems to be concerned with
Shakespeare’s play is Horatio who, in the dialogue with Hamlet in which he
tells the Danish prince about the apparition of his father’s ghost, speaks
Shakespeare’s lines with great emphasis and conviction. This is in some
ways an appropriate extension of Horatio’s role in Shakespeare’s play,
where he always speaks ‘straight’ among all the role-play and gameplaying, and seems to personify integrity and sincerity. Bene’s Horatio also
looks very angry, which may hint at the fact that, as I have written, he seems
to be the only one who cares about the development of the story and about
what should be done. Seeing how much indolence and unwillingness there
is around probably makes him very upset. But it must be clear that this is
my interpretation (if we are allowed to try and interpret Bene’s work).
Totally different is Hamlet’s attitude, who changes expression, tone and
volume in his voice, contradicting with his body (and facial) language the
words he speaks. He is not at all concerned with the role he should be
playing. He often speaks with his head on one side, in a slightly contorted
position, as if he was living in a world of his own.
Figure 19: Carmelo Bene as Hamlet
269
The same can be said about Claudius in the next scene, which in
Shakespeare’s text corresponds to 1.2.1-39 of the Q2 version. Claudius
speaks the lines given to him by the author, but looks bored and indolent, as
if he was not at all interested in what he is talking about. He only gets very
angry when he addresses Hamlet, then goes back to his monotonous acting.
Suddenly, Horatio speaks the famous line ‘Frailty, thy name is Woman’
(1.2.146), after which we see Hamlet ripping off pieces of paper, which he
gives to him. This scene is repeated several times in the play, and we later
learn that the pieces of paper contain Shakespeare’s lines which, in the
original text are spoken by Hamlet while, here, they are read by Horatio.
Again this might be an extension of an implication in Shakespeare’s text
that Horatio is Hamlet’s mediator with the world, but more importantly, I
believe, it hints at Hamlet’s abdication of his role. The next scene shows
Polonius, an old man with a long beard, who follows Gertrude and, while
undressing her, whispers to her the story of Oedipus, which should justify
Hamlet’s behaviour.
Before carrying on with the plot, there is enough material to
highlight some of the recurrent elements of Bene’s theatre and work on
Shakespeare. The first question we should ask is if there is a plot at all in
Bene’s Hamlet. My belief is that a plot does exist, but it is a new plot made
up of excerpts from various sources, Shakespeare and Laforgue in
particular, and completely re-arranged by the actor-author Bene. Also, it is
not a plot as we are accustomed to. Bene’s favourite novel was Joyce’s
Ulysses (a revisiting and modernist refashioning of The Odyssey – an
analogue for what Bene is doing to Hamlet), whose plot is not what we are
used to, but a plot exists, as there are characters who are related to one
another in passing a day of their life. I would summarize the plot of this
Amleto as follows: an actor-author (Bene or Hamlet?) and a group of actors
do their best to fight against the development of a story, that is, against a
plot. What is their goal, do they reach it and, if so, how? The first question
can only be answered through a paradox: their goal is that of not reaching a
goal. Once again, as I observed in my discussion of de Berardinis, and the
New Theatre, it is not the finished product that is important, but the ‘non
270
finito’ (the ‘unfinished’), the ‘opera aperta’ (the ‘open work’), and more
specifically, I would say the ‘divenire’ (the ‘becoming’) in the case of Bene.
Revisiting the play many times means staying with the process, which
consists in a continuous attempt to show the impossibility of representing
and interpreting reality and a playtext on the stage. Consequently the actors
do not do what is expected from them. Hamlet cannot be bothered with the
task he is given, and just wants to be an actor-author and flee Denmark.
Horatio, in a way, plays Hamlet’s role. Claudius seems as if he has been
forced to be there and to be Claudius. Ophelia is dressed (or undressed) like
a nurse-nun and is depicted as a nymphomaniac. Instead of taking his
revenge, Hamlet is corrupted by Claudius, and it is clear that, if the two are
accomplices, Shakespeare’s Hamlet does not exist anymore. Every other
element of the staging is conceived to block the development of
Shakespeare’s plot and even, I suggest, to contradict the audience’s
expectations. Let us consider Hamlet’s costume, which is probably the only
one that corresponds (or should correspond) to the role played by the actor.
Bene wears an over-large white collar on a dark velvet costume that may
recall Olivier’s Hamlet. I am not aware of whether this is an allusion to or a
parody of Olivier, but I believe that choosing that costume meant stressing
the role that Bene/Hamlet should be playing, and creating a contrast with
what the audience would actually see on the stage. Looking back to well
established Romantic and Victorian traditions, Olivier’s Hamlet was part of
the popular culture, and what one would expect Hamlet to look like even in
Italy.163 So, in the same way as the idea suggested by de Berardinis and
Peragallo’s choice of the title Sir and Lady Macbeth for their production of
Macbeth would be contradicted by the action, the appearance of Bene in a
typical Hamlet costume would be contradicted by the words spoken and the
actions performed. Also the tone of the voice does not correspond to what
should be the intention of the words. There are outbursts of laughter;
163
See figures 2 and 3 in chapter 2. Bene’s costume is not that different from the costumes
chosen by the nineteenth-century Great Actors.
271
whispers when the volume should be high, and inappropriate crazed
screams. Polonius’s words are hardly audible, and he speaks so fast that it is
difficult to make sense of what he is saying. But he does so on purpose. The
audience are not allowed to see Hamlet; they must be shown that theatre can
only exist in so far as it provokes sensations, astonishment, puzzlement. In
all the studies of Bene’s plays, words like ‘ecstasy’, ‘vision’, and ‘sensation’
recur. What these terms share is that they are all the opposite of ‘action’,
and are all resistant to language too. No action is allowed on the stage,
which recalls de Berardinis’s idea of the actor being a ‘stato di coscienza’
(‘state of consciousness’). In the interview given to De Marinis, he even
said that the ultimate communication between actors and audience should
happen only and uniquely through energy. The actor should say no word
and should make no movement. Yet, he would be able to connect with the
audience through his or her mere presence on the stage. De Berardinis did
not mean that he had ever reached such a state, but his is a strong assertion
of the power of the actor, whose presence is enough to fill the stage, and a
clear criticism of the figure and the role of the director. Even the actor Bene
was aiming at something like de Berardinis’s ‘state of consciousness’. In
fact, he was fascinated by certain saints (and some he invented) and, even
more, by mystics. What is a mystical experience if not the lack of action?
Again we can think of Artaud who, in the First Manifesto of the Theatre of
Cruelty affirmed:
But this tangible, objective theatre language captivates and
bewitches our senses by using a truly Oriental concept of expression.
It runs through our sensibility. Abandoning our Western ideas of
speech, it runs words into incantation. (…) It aims to exalt, to
benumb, to bewitch, to arrest our sensibility.164
What we are not sure about is if connecting with the audience was
Bene’s aim. On various occasions Bene was quite harsh with the public and
164
Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, pp. 69-70.
272
he had a sharp tongue that he used to insult them. It is true that the tradition
of insulting the audience is as old as the avant-garde itself, and played an
important role, for instance in the Serate Futuriste (Futurist Evenings).165
But these Futurist events were a huge success, and audiences flocked to be
insulted. In other words we may understand provocative and offensive
gestures, or ostensive disregard for the audience, as a complex form or
wish-fulfillment and hence communication. In the case of Bene it is not
quite clear whether he really despised the public. Without any doubt, he
wanted the audience to be deprived of their role of audience, and not to be
permitted to relapse into passivity. And it is all part of the same story. To
the non-actor corresponded the ‘non-audience’.
Inaction and non-representation are also clearly shown by the
attitude of the non-actors to one another. There is hardly any dialogue.
Everything becomes a monologue and, even when there is an exchange
between two characters, there is no eye contact. Each actor looks in front of
him or her, or they leer. They seem to be self-enclosed, just concerned with
themselves, careful to avoid any direct contact with their partners on the
stage because, once again, a dialogue would mean coherence, action, a
structure. The stage set becomes very chaotic, as no order is allowed, and
even music is carefully chosen for the same purpose.
Music was fundamental for Bene. As a child he became acquainted
with theatre through melodrama and, as an adult, he believed that no theatre
can be conceived without music. Therefore, music played an increasingly
important role in his career and was already very present in this version.
Farrell notices that Bene ‘added a deliberately disconcerting accompaniment
of jaunty, fairground music when sombre, tragic music would be
expected’.166 It should be clear, by now, why he did so. The presence of
various kinds of music in one play is another element that he shared with de
Berardinis’s theatre. On the whole, however, I would say that, while de
165
Futurist evenings were improvisatory evenings, aimed at provoking the audience and at
spreading Futurist ideas. The first was organized in Turin on 8 th March 1909. Often the
evenings ended with the police intervention and the arrest of the organizers.
166
Farrell, Carmelo Bene, p. 293.
273
Berardinis was interested in mingling, to see how Shakespeare reacted to it,
Bene’s mingling always aims at contradiction, therefore, at avoiding
coherence. Both artists, however, were interested in music because they
were much more concerned with sounds, as sounds do not carry a meaning,
and do not tell a story. As for Bene, Farrell defines him as a ‘vocal actor’, in
that ‘his voice is given the primacy expected of singers rather than of
dramatic actors’.167
I do not think it is necessary to give a detailed account of the rest of
the play. Little changes from what I have highlighted so far. Therefore, I
will only point out a few moments that are significant for my discussion.
Narrative is completely rejected, and is replaced by a fragmented structure
made up of very short scenes which, instead of being steps in a process of
development, seem to be arranged in a kind of horizontal structure that does
not take us anywhere. To the aiôn seen as comprising an infinite past and
future, he opposes chronos, the extended present in Deleuzian terms. Again
we see Hamlet handing over to Horatio small pieces of paper; again we see
Polonius whispering to Gertrude; again we see Claudius giving money to
Hamlet; again we see Hamlet being very rude to Ophelia to the point that he
slaps her on the face. The play within the play is also an exercise in
deconstruction of Shakespeare’s original, as Claudius, looking bored and
annoyed, complains because the actors are not telling the story well, and
gives them instructions, usurping what Hamlet does in Shakespeare’s
version. Once again Claudius is not playing his role. Instead of being the
unaware victim of Hamlet’s plan to have a confirmation of his guilt, he
encourages the actors to do just what will reveal his murder.
There are some very poetical moments in the production, for
example when Bene-Hamlet beautifully speaks some lines from a short
story in verse by Gozzano La signorina Felicita, which are written below:
Ed io non voglio più essere io!
Non più l’esteta gelido, il sofista,
167
Ibid.
274
ma vivere nel tuo borgo natio,
ma vivere alla piccola conquista
mercanteggiando placido, in oblio
come tuo padre, come il farmacista …
Ed io non voglio più essere io!168
And I do not want to be myself anymore!
No longer the icy aesthete, the sophist,
but I want to live in your native small village,
but I want to live trying to conquer small things
trading peacefully, in oblivion
like your father, like the chemist …
And I do not want to be myself anymore!
There is a clear reference to Hamlet’s wish to be somebody else and to
give up revenge, and also to the rebellion of the non-actor against
interpreting his role. Bene/Hamlet speaks these lines as if he was in a kind
of trance, or as if he was dreaming, which, once again takes us back to
Artaud:
We do not intend to do away with dialogue, but to give words
something of the significance they have in dreams.169
168
Guido Gozzano, La signorina Felicita e le poesie dei Colloqui (Palermo: Sellerio,
2001), unit 6, p. 60. Gozzano (1883-1916) was a poet, leader of a poetic school known as
crepuscolarismo, which favoured a direct, unadorned style to express nostalgic memories.
The second and last collection published during his lifetime was I colloqui (The Colloquies)
(1911), which addresses the themes of youth, creative repression, nostalgia, regret and
contentment. It includes the poem La signorina Felicita, ovvero, La Felicità (Signorina
Felicita or Felicity). The translation above is mine own, but an alternative English
translation can be found in The Man I Pretend to Be: The Colloquies and Selected Poems of
Guido Gozzano, transl. and ed. Michael Palma (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1981), pp. 66-97.
275
In the second part of the video there is another beautiful scene, when
Kate and the lead actor interpreting the roles of Gertrude and Claudius
alternate in a dialogue between a jealous husband and his wife, whom he
believes has been unfaithful. It is the translation of Complainte de l’époux
outragé composed by Laforgue after the popular medieval French song
Qu’allais-tu faire à la fontaine? which, in turn, is shaped on the model of
medieval ballads.
Qu’alliez-vouz faire à la Mad’lein,
Corbleu, ma moitié,
Qu’alliez-vous faire à la Mad’leine?
J’allais prier pour qu’un fils nous vienne,
Mon Dieu, mon ami;
J’allais prier pour qu’un fils nous vienne.170
For the sake of completeness I will also give Bene’s translation of
Laforgue’s lines:
RE:
Che andavi tu a fare a la Madeleine,
per Dio, mia metà,
che andavi tu a fare a la Madeleine?
REGINA:
Andavo a pregare se un figlio ci viene,
mio Dio, sposo mio;
andavo a pregare se un figlio ci viene.171
KING:
Why were you going to the Madeleine,
For goodness sake, my better half,
Why were you going to the Madeleine?
169
Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, p. 72.
Quoted in Baiardo and Trovato, Un classico del rifacimento, p. 103.
171
Quoted in Baiardo and Trovato, Un classico del rifacimento, p. 102.
276
170
QUEEN:
I was going to pray for a baby,
for goodness sake, my husband;
I was going to pray for a baby.
Interspersion of other sources continues and, in particular, the
alternation between Shakespeare and Laforgue. Towards the end of the play,
Laertes appears as a kind of revolutionary followed by a crowd of men
armed with pitchforks. He duels with Hamlet, kills him and, after Hamlet
has pronounced the words: ‘Qualis artifex pereo’ (‘Just as an artist, I die’)
attributed to Nero and to Hamlet by Laforgue, he kisses him on the mouth
and calls him ‘compagno’ (‘comrade’). Petrini gives two possible
interpretations of the phrase: Bene may have hinted at the death of the artist,
at his defeat; or he may have wanted to stress the fact that he dies as an actor
dies on the stage.172 According to the second interpretation, once again,
Bene wants to make it clear that theatre is not reality and that he is an actor
(or
better,
a
non-actor).
Such
a
thought
may
recall
Brecht’s
Verfremdungseffekt. In his essay ‘Un manifesto di meno’ (‘One Manifesto
Less’), contained in Bene-Deleuze’s Sovrapposizioni (Superpositions),
Gilles Deleuze notices that Brecht was still linked to the ‘teatro di
rappresentazione’ (‘theatre of representation’), as he still wished the
conflicts and contradictions contained in his plays to be understood by the
audience. The difference between theatre before and after Brecht, according
to Deleuze, was the shift ‘da un polo drammatico della rappresentazione
borghese a un polo epico della rappresentazione popolare’ (‘from a dramatic
pole
of
bourgeois
representation
to
an
epic
pole
of
popular
representation’).173 In this respect Bene’s theatre differed from Brecht’s
172
Petrini, Amleto da Shakespeare a Laforgue, p. 156.
Bene Deleuze, Sovrapposizioni: Riccardo III di Carmelo Bene. Un manifesto di meno di
Gilles Deleuze (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978), p. 87. The essay ‘Un manifesto di meno’ (‘One
Manifesto Less’) was originally written in French with the title ‘Un manifeste de moins’. A
commentary in English of the essay, is offered by Mohammad Kowsar, ‘Deleuze on
Theatre: A Case Study of Carmelo Bene’s Richard III’, Theatre Journal, 38.1, Dramatic
Narration, Theatrical Disruption (Mar 1986), 19-33.
277
173
significantly. Yet Bene searched for alienation too, the alienation of the
actor and of the character from the role he or she has to play. In my opinion,
Brecht and Bene use the same means to reach a different goal: Brecht did
not want the audience to feel empathy with the characters because
detachment allowed them to have a clear mind to judge and to reflect upon
what they were seeing on the stage. Bene, instead, used a kind of
Verfremdungseffekt to avoid any possibility of a naturalistic theatre in
favour of a totally aesthetic theatre.
Hamlet returned again in 1987 with a theatre production entitled
Hommelette for Hamlet, operetta inqualificabile da J. Laforgue, which was
also recorded for television and, in 1994, with Hamlet Suite (spettacoloconcerto da J. Laforgue) (theatre performance-concert from J. Laforgue),
which then became a CD.174 As we see, the name of Shakespeare is no
longer mentioned. In both versions, in fact, Laforgue becomes the main
source (there are also quotes from the collection of poems Derniers Vers),175
interspersed with lines from Shakespeare. There are some elements that do
not change in comparison with the previous versions: Hamlet is still the
actor who feels burdened with his role, Kate is still one of the protagonists.
Figure 20: Carmelo Bene as Hamlet in Hommelette for Hamlet
174
It should be noted that ‘inqualificabile’ has a double meaning in Italian. It means ‘not
acceptable’ (by bourgeois standards we can infer), but it also suggests something that
cannot be qualified, i.e. that resists genre conventions.
175
This collection was published posthumously in 1890.
278
Horatio keeps, more or less, the same role he had before. Yet, there are
differences: in Hommelette for Hamlet, for example, the set is baroque and
is composed of a group of marble statues mainly representing angels.
Figure 21: Stefania De Santis as Ludovica Albertoni in Hommelette for Hamlet
Hamlet is not killed at the end of the play. The characters are
reduced to the prince, Kate, Horatio, and the king. And then there is the
blessed Ludovica Albertoni, whose marble statue by Gianlorenzo Bernini
can be seen in S. Francesco a Ripa church in Rome. Music and sounds play
a far more important role than in the previous productions. The king is a
baritone that sings his part, and the whole performance is accompanied by
the music of Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, which will also
accompany the scenes of Hamlet Suite. The increasingly important role of
music is already stressed in the title of this last production, and the fact that
it was made into a CD gives evidence that the sound and vocal quality of the
production were certainly more prominent than the visual. Giacchè notices
that if we consider the story of Bene’s Hamlet, we can trace a path that goes
from action (though continually hindered), to poetry, to singing. The shift
from action to inaction is shown clearly in Hommelette for Hamlet, where
the characters are replaced with statues. Action, therefore, becomes inaction
and singing in these last two productions, and the audience are forced to
move from representation to sensation. As for the ‘plot’ of this last version
of Hamlet Suite, it includes elements that were already present in the very
first production (1962), but the principal model is the 1987 version. The
movement from action to sensation may recall the journey that de Berardinis
279
took in the trilogy of the 1990s. In both cases there is a movement towards a
more spiritual sphere, which, in the case of Bene, is given its shape through
the sonic quality of the last two productions. Language loses its
communicative function completely and becomes pure sound. Referring to
his idea of theatre, over fifty years before, Artaud had affirmed that ‘it
expands the voice’,176 and in the Second Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty
he stated that words must be ‘construed in an incantatory, truly magical
sense, side by side with this logical sense – not only for their meaning, but
for their forms, their sensual radiation’.177 Artaud was undoubtedly a source
for Bene,
178
but the Italian actor/director expanded on the French writer’s
ideas and, by the time he directed these two versions of Hamlet, he had
coined the definiton of the actor as a ‘macchina attoriale’ (‘actor-machine’),
an actor, who has got rid of his human expressive possibilities, and has
become a machine, whose voice is amplified in timbre and tone. Bene
speaks of ‘l’amplificazione a teatro’ [‘the amplification in the theatre’].179 It
is the phase of the so-called phoné, when the actor becomes his voice, and
his voice is intended primarily as a sonic mechanism.180 Referring to other
actors, Bene affirms:
Questi incauti, avventati e superficiali dicitori-attori conferenzieri
riferiscono il ‘testo’, ignoranti che il ‘testo’ è l’attore; il testo è la
voce.181
These unwary, rash and superficial speaker-actors lecturers tell the
‘text’, ignorant of the fact that the ‘text’ is the actor; the text is the
voice.
Therefore, there is not a text beforehand that is told by the actor. On the
contrary it is the actor who creates the text on the stage, who becomes the
176
Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, p. 70.
Ibid., p. 83.
178
Bene, Opere, p. XIV,
179
Ibid., p. XIII.
180
Bene, ‘La voce di Narciso’, in Opere, p. 1013.
181
Ibid., p. 1015. Author’s emphases.
280
177
text, and the text is nothing but his voice, the voice in its sonic quality, not
as a means to convey meaning. The dream-like atmosphere of Bene’s and of
the other characters’ performances, their emphasis on signifiers that do not
necessarily have an obvious meaning, suggest a fascination with the
language of the unconscious. This is enhanced by the presence of the
blessed Ludovica Albertoni in Hommelette for Hamlet, who speaks her lines
lying down as if she was in a state of ecstasy. And if we listen to her words,
we realize that their appropriate location is certainly the world of the
unconscious, not of the conscious.182
**********
At this point I can draw some conclusions concerning Bene’s work
on Hamlet. To my aid comes Deleuze’s essay ‘Un manifesto di meno’ (‘One
Manifesto Less’). Deleuze follows a precise line which, as I understand,
informs the entirety of Bene’s theatre. According to Deleuze, Bene’s
process consists in: depriving the text of all the fixed elements; putting
everything in continuous variation; and moving everything to a minor
level.183 As for the first, Bene deprived Hamlet of most of the elements that
belong to Shakespeare’s text, and that, with the exception of very
experimental or very free appropriations, have always been present on the
182
The title Hommelette for Hamlet might be a tribute to or simply a reference to Lacan’s
theory of the ‘hommelette’, ‘the little scrambled egg’. I have found no direct link between
Bene’s theatre and Lacan’s theories (and it would not do justice to Lacan to explain his
theories in relatively little space), but it seems to me that something of Lacan’s ideas about
the unconscious may have found their way in Bene's theatre. The unconscious for Lacan is
structured like a language, and ‘is composed less of signs – stable meanings – than of
signifiers’. (Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 3rd edn (1983; Oxford:
Blackwell, 2009), p. 146. Author’s emphases). The unconscious speaks, but it speaks
through an intricate and indefinite web of signifiers, which are linked to one another as if in
a chain. When we dream, we visualize an object, an animal, another human being, signifiers
that do not necessarily have a direct signified. On the contrary they may hint at something
else, and may be simply signifiers within a wider chain of other signifiers.
183
Deleuze ‘Un manifesto di meno’, in Bene Deleuze, Sovrapposizioni, p. 86.
281
stage. All the other elements, those that Bene chose, were revisited again
and again, but in a process of incremental variation. This responds to his
need never to stop the process, and to avoid ‘manufacturing’ a ‘finished
product’. Variation also means minority. Bene preferred minor authors to
major authors, as major meant normality to him, the end of process, while
minority meant experimenting, exploring. Yet, Deleuze warns, minority can
easily become majority, and variation can easily become normality.
Therefore, it is necessary to keep varying and also to vary variation.184
When it comes to major authors, like Shakespeare, the secret is to treat him
like a minor author, which means depriving him of those elements for which
he is best known all around the world, and treat him like a minor. So, he can
keep developing.185 I find this interpretation fascinating.
When Bene started his career, his work was really revolutionary in
the panorama of Italian theatre and, as a consequence, not easy to
understand. Today the situation has changed significantly. All the books and
articles I have referred to in my discussion allow us to see a clear thread that
gives coherence to his Shakespearian productions. But, besides a rational
understanding, which is what the researcher needs, I think that it is
worthwhile to watch the videos of Bene’s productions without prejudice,
plunging into them, and letting them speak to us. There is poetry in them,
there is art in its aesthetic quality, and there is music. Bene’s productions
needed a spectator who already knew much about the sources, but they also
needed a naïve eye and ear ready to be surprised and to enjoy art for its own
sake independently from the meaning that it carries. Listening to Bene,
whose voice varies in timbre, tone, and modulation, and who, apparently
effortlessly, alternates between extremes of pattern of speech changing his
tempo from largo to prestissimo is a source of pure joy.
Bene shared in the principles and ideas that gave life to that
‘theatrical season’ called New Theatre, among whose representatives he was
particularly attuned to de Berardinis. This meant a new approach to
184
185
Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 74.
282
Shakespeare’s plays, no longer seen as immutable artworks to be staged
again and again in a constant search for fidelity to the text, but as a huge
resource from which they could draw in order to undermine the structure of
the director’s theatre. De Berardinis and Bene returned to the Italian
tradition of the actor’s theatre but, while the Great Actor used any possible
means and all his talent and skills to identify with the character, Bene did
the opposite. He used the same talent and the same skills to fight against the
temptation to interpret a role, to identify with the character, and to tell a
story. It is Hamlet’s never-ending rebellion, that quality that – as Florian
Mussgnug suggests in his The Eloquence of Ghosts – makes of Hamlet the
quintessential avant-garde artist for some authors of Gruppo 63. Mussgnug
quotes from Manganelli’s ‘Un amore impossibile’ (‘An Impossible Love’),
a short story contained in the collection Agli dei ulteriori (To the further
Gods) published in 1972.186 It is an epistolary exchange between Hamlet
and the Princess of Clèves, where ‘Elsinore is a world threatened by
darkness and decay, a universe reduced to a dull stage where dreary players
endlessly rehearse lines from Hamlet’.187 Manganelli’s Hamlet rebels, and
‘he clings to his rebellious aspirations with an obstinacy that could serve as
an example for many avant-garde artists’,188 as it is clear from the following
words:
Io voglio disubbidire al mio dio, voi supponete che così facendo io
ubbidisca al mio dio ulteriore, e che, dunque, codesta mia
disubbidienza sia ubbidiente. Ma in tal modo imparo la gioia aspra
186
It interesting to notice that Manganelli was a member of Gruppo 63, but saw himself as
an outsider, and Bene saw himself as an outsider within the New Theatre.
187
Florian Mussgnung, The Eloquence of Ghosts: Giorgio Manganelli and the Afterlife of
the Avant-Garde (Bern: Lang, 2010), p. 204. La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel
which was published anonymously in March 1678. Its author is generally held to be
Madame de La Fayette. The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559
at the court of Henry II of France.
188
Ibid., p. 205.
283
della disubbidienza, e insegno al dio ulteriore che di me non ci si può
fidare.189
I wish to disobey my god, you suppose that in so doing I obey my
further god, and so my disobedience is obedient. But in this way I
come to learn the bitter joy of disobedience, and teach the further
god that one cannot put faith in me.190
The danger implicit in every insurgence is that of replacing one system with
another, in the same way as – Deleuze warns – variation can easily become
normality. But Manganelli’s Hamlet does not want to surrender. His
disobedience is endless and, in Bene’s theatre, variation never ends. Yet,
even within the continuous variation and despite the differences that exist
among Bene’s various Shakespearian productions, I see a thread and a
strong idea that inform all of them. What at the beginning were very
innovative experiments acquired substance in the more mature productions
and, I believe, Bene transformed his initial provocations into a well-defined
methodology.
**********
As I hope my discussion in this last chapter has revealed, the New
Theatre took many different forms in which it expressed itself, which I will
briefly summarize before moving to the conclusion of my research work.
The New Theatre stretched from Ricci’s mainly visual theatre, in which the
actor – when he was present on the stage – was regarded as and treated like
an object, to de Berardinis’s and Bene’s theatre, which advocated a return to
189
Ibid.
Giorgio Manganelli, To the Gods Beyond, translated by John Walker, unpublished,
2010.
284
190
the typically Italian tradition of the actor as the unique creator of the play on
the stage. But within the differences there were many common elements.
Fundamental was the idea of scenic writing, by which we mean the
development of a play on the stage, as opposed to the staging of a fixed and
immutable text written beforehand. In scenic writing the text loses its
predominant role, and becomes one of the elements that make up a staging,
and a source from which everyone can draw to create a new artwork. More
than the finished artwork it is the process that counts, and theatre is seen as
a kind of laboratory where the new theatre practitioners could carry out their
experiments. As the play is considered an open structure, many
interpretations are possible, both for the creator of the performance, whose
main interest is to express himself or herself, and for the audience. There is
no concern with authenticity and, following post-structuralist theories, the
author’s intended meaning is regarded as secondary to the meaning that the
reader (here read ‘audience’) perceives, and every individual spectator
creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given
text. This means that the audience are no longer seen as passive recepients
of the director’s reading of the play, but join in the creation and, for this
reason, various attempts to eliminate the fourth wall are made.
This was the last chapter of my journey in the world of Shakespeare,
in the world of Italian theatre, and in the various ways in which the two
worlds have intersected in the course of the centuries. I will offer my final
thoughts on what I have been researching in the conclusion, in which I will
also give a brief overview of how the relationship between Italian actors and
directors and Shakespeare has developed in the last few decades.
285
Conclusion
The first series of questions that I posed in the introduction to my
work revolve around the shift from Shakespeare’s original texts to their
adaptations for the Italian stage. I asked myself what happens to a text
written in early modern English when it is translated into a foreign language
and then transformed into physicality on a foreign stage. The second series
of questions addressed the evolution of Italian theatre in terms of acting and
of directing, and how Shakespeare’s plays have been staged in the theatre of
the actor of the mid-nineteenth century, in the theatre of the director that
flourished in the middle of the twentieth century, and in the New Theatre,
born at the end of the 1950s. But prior to this I wanted to study when and
how Shakespeare’s plays were introduced in Italy, and how they were
received.
As to the last point I have referred to, there is a general reflection
that I want to make, and one that I would not have made at the beginning of
my research. What happened to Shakespeare in Italy is not that different
from what happened in Britain. I am aware that this statement may sound
completely wrong, and indeed it is, if we think of a number of factors that
create a huge gap between the story of Shakespearian adaptations in Britain
and in Italy, like the different language, the different culture, the different
evolution of theatre practices. Yet there are some elements that have
affected the ‘afterlife’ of Shakespeare in Britain and of Shakespeare in Italy
that are not so dissimilar.
As I have illustrated in chapter 1, the acceptance of Shakespeare in
Italy was anything but a straightforward process. His plays were poorly
regarded because they were disrespectful of the rules of classical theatre.
Therefore, the Italians had to wait until the first decades of the nineteenth
century to see them on the stage. This is not the story of Shakespeare in
Britain of course, but from the reopening of theatres in 1660, Shakespeare’s
texts were altered, as the British people saw in his plays the same faults that
286
would be traced in Italy some time later. The story of the adulterations of
the plays continued in the eighteenth century, to suit the aesthetic and moral
taste of the age, and until the first decades of the nineteenth century
dramatists still worked with Restoration adaptations, which were no more
dissimilar from the original texts than the stagings by the Italian Great
Actors of the mid-nineteenth century.
An issue that has informed all the successive chapters of my research
is that of authenticity. After the adulterations of the Great Actors, the main
concern of the generation of the directors was with restoring the original
texts, and the director was seen as the custodian of the text. In opposition to
this, the experimentalists of the New Theatre resumed the habit of rewriting
the texts, as these were seen as a source of inspiration for the creation of
new artworks. Even as to this big topic there is a final thought that I
consider particularly important. I have discussed extensively the
commitment to authenticity that characterized the approach of directors like
Strehler to Shakespeare’s plays. Yet in none of my readings of Strehler’s
work and productions have I found any reference to the instability and
fluidity of Shakespeare’s texts. When one considers all the changes that a
text went through from the first draft to its printing, alongside the habit of
collaborative writing in Shakespeare’s time, the concept of ‘original text’
becomes very shaky. On the other hand, through my analysis of the
rewritings of artists like de Berardinis and Bene, and of the way in which
they worked, I have discovered many elements in their theatre that were
very Shakespearian, despite the fact that their productions share very little
with any of the playtexts that we can find either in English or in any Italian
translation. While Strehler intersected with Shakespeare’s tradition through
a philological reading of the texts, de Berardinis and Bene expressed their
love for the English playwright by approaching his texts in a similar way to
how Shakespeare himself had approached the sources he used for his own
creations. At the same time, we cannot overlook that while Strehler’s
productions, besides being highly regarded for their aesthetic value,
contributed to spreading knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays in Italy thanks
287
to their philological approach, Ricci’s, de Berardinis’s and Bene’s required
the audience to know the plays beforehand.
Many times in my research have I asked myself questions about
what gets lost in a translated text and, consequently, in staging a
Shakespeare play in a language other than English. It is clear that not
everything of Shakespeare’s English can be rendered in a translation.
Therefore, watching a play in English is a different experience from
watching one in Italian or in another language. Yet at least some of what
cannot be rendered through the language can be achieved in theatre through
the tools that are used to transform a text into theatrical action. I have not
explored the issue of translation in detail because this could be the subject of
another thesis, but my analysis of stage productions has revealed that the
meaning of a word, of a phrase, or of a line, can be conveyed by a gesture, a
movement, a facial expression, along with the choice of the music, of the
lights, of the costumes, and of the props. However, having said that, and
having seen many productions both in English and in Italian, I need to stress
that the two experiences are not comparable. But this may not necessarily be
a drawback.
Coming to the investigation of the development of Italian theatre in
the period I have considered in my research, many reflections can be made
and conclusions drawn. In the introduction I asked myself which of the three
main figures, the author, the actor, or the director, Italian theatre has
privileged. In order to give a complete answer we should consider a much
longer period than the 150 years that I have studied. In so doing we would
answer that theatre (and not only Italian theatre) has always been the theatre
of the actor, and that only very recently has the new figure of the director
been introduced. Limiting the scope of research to the period analysed in my
research, I can draw the conclusion that Italian theatre has assigned an
indisputable centrality to the actor. In fact, directing developed in Italy later
than in most of the European countries, as the resistance of actors to the
introduction of this new figure was very strong. Furthermore, after just a
few decades of stagings by the director’s theatre, the generation of the
experimentalists of the 1960s advocated a return to the dominance of the
288
actor, seen as the real protagonist of the stage. The actor resumed not only
the functions of the director, but also the functions of the author, as his or
her adaptations were real dramaturgical operations. The general mistrust
between authors and actors in the 1960s led them to the rediscovery of the
classics, and of Shakespeare in particular, although in completely different
modalities from the work that directors like Strehler had done.
The shift from the theatre of the directors to the theatre of the
experimentalists meant a completely different approach to theatre in
general. While the first were mainly interested in staging the best possible
production to give to the audience, the second regarded the theatrical space
as a safe place where they could express themselves, and try to find new
ways to perform and to stage Shakespeare. The result of this process,
therefore, was a kind of theatre that acquired therapeutic qualities. It is
noteworthy that alongside professional theatre today, innumerable are the
laboratories and workshops for amateur actors, who are less interested in the
texts than in finding a space where they can express their creativity freely in
a society that requires its members to wear a mask. Roles are reversed, and
life becomes the theatre where we play a part, while theatre is the place
where we can find our true self again. De Berardinis’s trilogy is certainly to
be seen within this context.
Despite the completely different approach to the playtexts by
directors like Strehler and actor-directors like Bene, my analysis of the
various productions has led me to the conclusion that every time a director
stages a play, he inevitably gives his own reading of the play. As I pointed
out in chapter 3, Strehler’s productions of Shakespeare’s plays were the
plays filtered through the director’s sensitivity, through his culture, and his
taste. Therefore, it would be wrong to grant the role of creator to the author
only, or to those theatre practitioners who freely interpret the playtexts.
Every director, independently from his or her commitment to authenticity, is
a creator. He creates every time he makes a choice for his staging.
One final thought I want to express is the idea of the existence of a
cyclic pattern that characterizes the history of theatre. Limiting this
reflection to my research, I have witnessed various returns to pre-existing
289
models. The Great Actors of the nineteenth century resumed the Italian
tradition of the commedia dell’arte and the Elizabethan tradition, in which
the actors acquired dramaturgical qualities, and were the directors of their
own plays. The generation of the directors moved away from the practices
of the Great Actors, and claimed a neat separation between the work of the
author, the work of the director, and the work of the actor, who, in this kind
of theatre lost his or her predominant role and became subservient to the
director. The experimentalists of the 1950s and 1960s, instead, returned to
the theatre of the actor, to the habit of rearranging texts in their very
personal way, but they also managed to create a theatre that differed
sensibly from the theatre of the Great Actors.
The question I need to ask now is: what came next? How have
Shakespeare’s plays been put on stage in the last few decades in Italy? I do
not think that we can compare the recent past with the three great
revolutions – or moments of evolution – that I have been exploring in my
research. Furthermore, I have chosen the biggest and most influential
figures of these theatrical experiences. What has happened in the period
between de Berardinis’s and Bene’s productions and today is the story of
individual enterprises that range from more philological readings of the
playtexts to very free interpretations. In general I would say that there is
more concern with the text in Britain than there is in Italy. The London or
Stratford stages, just to mention two, usually offer productions that more
often than not go back to Shakespeare’s originals (though in reduced
versions sometimes), whereas in Italy there is a tendency to rewrite.
Probably the fact that Italian directors work on translated texts plays a part
in this.
I would like now to refer to a few of the contemporary actors and
directors who have worked and are working with Shakespeare. One-person
shows are a long-standing tradition in Italy. Therefore, there are also a few
examples of a one-person Shakespeare. For example we can cite the work
done with Shakespeare by Roberto Herlitzka (born in Turin in 1937), and by
Lella Costa (born in Milan in 1952). Herlitzka’s has been performing his Ex
290
Amleto since 1998, and continues to tour around Italy (he also took it to
France). Although he has not altered the text (but he has reduced it and
changed the order of some scenes), his reading of Hamlet is obviously very
personal and is mainly an exploration of the theme of loneliness. Herlitzka,
in fact, does not give voice to the other characters other than on two brief
occasions. The audience is aware of their presence, but only through
Hamlet’s words, who addresses them and asks them questions, but does not
take on their role to give answers. I saw this wonderful performance in
December 2012 and was really surprised when I heard the audience applaud
after Hamlet had given his instructions to the company of actors. Some
habits never die in Italy! Lella Costa offered her reading of Hamlet in 2008.
Costa was Hamlet, but also Ophelia, Horatio, and the ghost of the dead king.
Like Herlitzka, she had to adapt the text to the presence of a single
performer on the stage. Alongside Shakespeare’s words she used poems by
Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath to describe Ophelia’s madness, and
referred to the Italian writer Italo Calvino. With Herlitzka and Costa we
have once again examples of an actor or an actress who fills the stage with
his or her sole presence. And how many more could we cite in the panorama
of Italian theatre: Vittorio Gassman, Dario Fo, Roberto Benigni, Gigi
Proietti, and others.
Completely different are Ronconi’s productions. Ronconi (born in
Tunisia in 1933) was at the Convegno di Ivrea, but he was not one of the
protagonists of those days. Since 1999 he has been the artistic director of
Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Without doubts his theatre is the director’s
theatre. He usually works with young actors trained at the drama school that
he himself directs, whom he shapes according to his ideas of acting. He is
considered the leader of the second generation of Italian directors but has
always refused to be labelled; he has created a personal poetics offering
very long and complex productions in which the scenery becomes the
protagonist. He has been defined as ‘regista delle macchine e
dell’impossibile’ (‘director of machines and of the impossible’). In his
Riccardo III, Vittorio Gassman (one of the most talented Italian actors of the
second half of the twentieth century) was imprisoned in a sort of prosthesis
291
that made his movements very difficult. Ronconi has often chosen to stage
narrative texts, cinema scripts or even scientific writings; but among his
most recent productions there are two plays by Shakespeare which, I admit,
rather baffled me: Sogno di una notte di mezza estate staged in two
successive theatrical seasons: 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 and Il mercante di
Venezia in 2009-2010. His Sogno di una notte di mezza estate was a
Midsummer Night’s Dream without a dream. The wood did not exist; in its
place he used big letters forming the word ‘FORESTA’ that slid on rails.
His reading of The Merchant of Venice was quite unusual I believe, as he
chose to put the emphasis on the tragic side of the play, ignoring the light
aspects. Ronconi also directed Verdi’s Macbeth in 1980, five years after
Strehler did so at Teatro La Scala.
Very well rooted on the Milanese stage is the company of Teatro
dell’Elfo now called Elfo Puccini – Teatro d’Arte Contemporanea. The
Teatro dell’Elfo was founded in 1973 by Elio De Capitani together with
cinema director Gabriele Salvatores. Critic Giovanni Raboni wrote in
Corriere della Sera on April, 30, 1993:
Esiste, innegabilmente, un marchio, una linea, una griffe Teatridithalia
... situazioni e parole ‘forti’, appena al di qua o decisamente al di là
della pornografia, recitazione senza mezze tinte, anfetaminica ...
ricorso sistematico all’amplificazione sonora, con decibel da
discoteca, continue citazioni ... dal linguaggio della TV, del cinema,
del fumetto’.
There certainly exists a brand, a griffe Teatridithalia (the name given
to the company after they took over another theatre in Milan) ...
‘strong’ words and situations on the borderline of pornography,
amphetaminic acting in full tones ... systematic use of sound
amplification, constant quotations ... from the language of TV, cinema
and comic strips).
The commitment of the company to the classics in general, and to
Shakespeare’s plays in particular, is a long-standing one, though they also
292
offer productions of contemporary authors like Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane,
Steven Berkoff, and Alan Bennett. As for Shakespeare they seem to be
interested in the plays in which a generation clash is present like Romeo e
Giulietta, Sogno di una notte di mezza estate, Il racconto d’inverno. They
usually translate Shakespeare’s plays rather than relying on available
translations; the versions that they offer are sometimes a bit devoid of
philological scruples and may offend admirers of orthodoxy, but their
productions are created with coups de théâtre and embody many of the
magical, transformative possibilities of the theatre. Newspapers reviews are
mixed, but their Shakespearian productions are usually cherished by young
people.
An interesting experiment with Hamlet has been made by Federico
Tiezzi (born in Lucignano in Tuscany in 1951). Between 1998 and 2001, he
carried out a thorough analysis of Hamlet running an extended workshop
from which three shows were put on stage, which he regarded as ‘notes’ on
Hamlet in preparation for directing his Amleto in 2002. His work consisted
in exploring the various possible readings of the text, and in showing the
multiplicity of the points of view. All these readings, along with different
staging styles and four different translations, were present in the 2002
production. He used the 1814 translation of Michele Leoni, Gerardo
Guerrieri’s and Alessandro Serpieri’s translations, and the translation that
Mario Luzi made for this production.
Massimiliano Civica is a young director (he was born in Rome in
1974) who directed Il mercante di Venezia in 2008 and Un sogno nella notte
dell’estate in 2010. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is usually
translated in Italian as Sogno di una notte di mezza estate, but Civica’s
translation is more correct. Civica, in fact, affirms that he tries to be as
faithful as possible to the text, beginning with the title. Despite being a
director he believes in the close collaboration between the director, the
author (even when the author is dead), and the actor, whom he defines as
‘the actor-author’.
Worth mentioning is the work done by Antonio Latella (born in
Castellamare di Stabia in 1967) Of his various Shakespearian productions I
293
will only refer to his most recent one, Lear staged in 2010, with Giorgio
Albertazzi, one of the last Italian mattatori, in the title role.1 Latella wanted
a ‘chamber show’ where the fourth wall was eliminated. The set was very
simple, just a wooden table, a few chairs and the scripts for the actors. The
play started with Albertazzi reading the script, and then being joined by the
other actors. From the simple, fictive first reading, the actors moved to an
impassioned interpretation, in a game of theatre within theatre, in which
Latella tried to find a balance between the two moments of rehearsal. As
always in his productions, he used various devices to create a
Verfremdungseffekt, like non-diegetic sounds and music, placards with parts
of the text, and microphones to amplify and distort sounds and noises.
I wish to finish this roundup of Shakespearian productions in Italy
with the experiments carried out in prisons. Earlier this year (2012) cinema
directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani presented their film Cesare deve morire
(Caesar must die), which follows convicts of maximum security Rebibbia
Prison in the suburbs of Rome in their rehearsals of Julius Caesar. The
brothers scripted around the play and created a semi-documentary film that
follows the internal life of the prisoners alongside their theatrical
performances. It is theatre that becomes therapy for the inmates, a way to
express their feelings, their anger, and their desperation.
Far from being a point of arrival, my research allows much more
exploration into the world of Shakespeare on the Italian stage. Various lines
could be investigated. The natural sequel of my project would be a
comparison between contemporary English and Italian Shakespeare, which
could be enriched by a number of interviews carried out both in Italy and in
Britain. I have used interviews only occasionally in my project. All the
actors and directors whom I have contacted responded enthusiastically to
1
Giorgio Albertazzi was born in 1923.
294
my request, but I have not always had the possibility to see them in the time
span of my research.
Another line of research could be that of Shakespeare’s plays in
teatro di figura (puppet theatre), a long-standing tradition in Italy. Susan
Young’s Shakespeare Manipulated examines the links between Shakespeare
and the Italian theatre of marionette, burattini, and pupi both during the
dramatist’s lifetime and in the productions of his work in Italy within the
genre of teatro di figura.2 Massimo Schuster, born in Italy in 1950 and
living in France for thirty years, used Shakespeare’s works more than once,
in productions in which he blended the presence of actors and of puppets on
the stage. Gaspare Carlo Gioachino Colla started to perform with his
marionettes around 1835, and his heirs still take their marionettes around
Italy and abroad. La Tempesta and Macbeth are among their Shakespearian
adaptations.
There are also the re-writings of Hamlet and Macbeth (Ambleto of
1972 and Macbetto of 1974) by Giovanni Testori where the writer
experiments with language, or the re-writing of La Tempesta (1983) by
Eduardo De Filippo in a seventeenth-century Neapolitan dialect, which
could be explored. This would mean investigating written texts more than
stage adaptations (although these written works have also been staged), and
would focus on the double issue of translation into Italian and into Italian
dialects.
Even a project on ‘Shakespeare in Prison’ would be interesting, I
believe. Besides Rebibbia Prison there are other penal institutions where
theatre projects are carried out, and Shakespeare is always among the
chosen playwrights. This exploration would investigate the field of theatre
as therapy, and would explore how a very special group of people reacts to
Shakespeare’s plays.
2
Susan Young, Shakespeare Manipulated: The Use of the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare
in ‘teatro di figura’ in Italy (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London:
Associated University Presses, 1996).
295
My journey has now come to an end, but, as I have just illustrated,
there is much more to investigate about Shakespeare in Italy, in a story that
is made of evolutions and new discoveries on the one hand, and of returns to
previous modes and experiences on the other. It is not just a way forward,
but also a road that takes us back to old models that can be resumed and
given a new, modern shape, in a kind of cyclic pattern that seems to
characterise the history of theatrical culture.
296
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